Cuene.com

Tag: leadership

  • Passing the Torch vs Keeping the Flame Burning

    Passing the Torch vs Keeping the Flame Burning

    This post by Adam Singer has been in an open tab for a while.

    For one, it’s a relevant topic for me right now as I think about work and “my work” in whatever phase I’m in, careerwise.

    And, it’s also relevant because I’m re-reading some fiction by folks that were “late” in their career (viz Philip Roth).

    The post makes the argument that those that have reached “success” in their work – established elders (EE’s) who are creatives, corporates, sports – will hit a point where the impact of their work will no longer grow and may start declining. They might be “past their prime” or perhaps they’re trying too hard or just replaying the hits. They’re just sticking around for the money (e.g. Harrison Ford) or the attention or to stay relevant (e.g. Coppola). Maybe they’re still really good (Lebron), but a couple steps slower.

    When that happens, Singer argues, it’s better for those leaders to shift their focus, from trying to make work that really lands to building up those around them, to nurture the talent.

    At some point, the most meaningful thing you can do isn’t to create more but to help others create. To teach. To nurture. To invest. To build frameworks for a future that doesn’t need you at its center…. Because modernity continues to prop up the old at the cost of the young and pull the ladder up wherever possible, perhaps that’s all they feel they can do (sell the dream to others).

    Singer focuses on the creative industry for most of his EE examples: filmmakers, comedians, and the cultural icons that become symbols in our culture. His examples depend on creative “misses” (but I bet Seinfeld’s movie “worked” financially for Netflix) and artistic wins with mixed commercial impact (Coppola).

    Singer is a marketing guy talking to business folks; I think corporate is his real audience, and the creative examples are common reference points. We all know corporate world is much different than the creative industry, but this essay still prompts a good discussion about his key point: There’s a ton of value in EE’s leaning into mentorship and building the talent around themselves vs “clutching at the levers of power”.

    So why isn’t this happening more in corporate America?

    If you’re on your way “up” in your career, this will most likely resonate with you. You will have seen numerous examples of “established elders” sticking around too long, that should have retired or otherwise gotten out of the way a long time ago. Maybe they’re staying to pay for college for their kids, maybe they still love the corporate game. Maybe they can’t let go of the status (the travel perks, the deference, the parking spot, the doors that open). Practically, they’re taking up the spot you probably want. They probably aren’t investing in helping you build your skills and, in the worst case, they know you’re the competition and are working against you.

    If you’re one of the “Established Elders” yourself, you’ll be sensitive to the age bias inherent in this essay. You know you’re at the top of your game, maybe better than ever. Your experience is a differentiator and wisdom keeps you from making dumb mistakes. Your game has, as they say in pro sports, slowed down because you know it so well. You’re in the sweet spot between experience and performance. You’re the ringer they should call in a clutch situation.

    You’ll also recognize what he doesn’t acknowledge: These days, corporate America doesn’t really give a shit about mentoring and wisdom and talent cultivation. In more stable days, talent and leadership development was a strategic differentiator (e.g. “the GE way”). For the last 20 years though (roughly corresponding to the digital and globalization boom) corporate leaders are working in a much more dynamic, disrupted competitive battlefield as everyone tries to level up their skills while managing costs. Something has to give, and it’s probably talent development.

    There are no real incentives for leaders to build the talent around them anymore, it seams. Short term results will always take priority over culture and talent building. Spending too much time coaching, developing and nurturing talent means either taking their eye off of the “growth” and “impact” ball, or potentially arming their “competition”.

    When it comes time for promotions, the choice may come down to “experienced” culture-building leader who can still deliver “adequate” results OR a younger leader who can crush the results but isn’t great at team development or doesn’t have organizational savvy. You know which way corporate leaning. PE-backed firms? No question.

    The “Learning and Development” people will protest, but we all know it’s true. There isn’t an established staff role these days for experienced, wise leaders who are not crushing it, performance wise. If you’re not absolutely nailing the revenue and profit targets, if you’re not making highly visible, tangible impact to margins and customer satisfaction, if you’re not bringing genuine technical innovation, you’re going to be on the bubble.

    Singer implies EEs can be a part of an important effort to nurture the next generation of contributors and makers and company builders. He’s talking about entertainment and culture, but I read this as a plea to our corporate culture makers, too:

    We should normalize this transition: die helping and passing the torch, starting this process with generous amounts of time and energy left. Build something greater than yourself by letting it belong to someone else. We need a culture with enough wisdom to nurture what’s next, not languish in its own self-indulgent nostalgia.

    I got lucky. I worked in two organizations where it was clear, but never expressly acknowledged, that there were a handful of “established” leaders on the org chart to help guide and teach the next generation. They were good, maybe not great, at delivering results. But, they were superior in communicating the culture, advising rising talent, guiding folks through the organizational matrix and helping to share lore inside the corporate walls. They were kept around to help grow the talent around them.

    There are so many excellent talent builders that are getting churned out in the endless re-orgs, RIFs, and resets. I wish there was a role for leaders to step into when they stepped “down” or, as Singer hints at, “grow up”. How do corporations create roles for experienced leaders where they can be valued for supporting and developing the talent? Do those even exist anymore?

    Its happening in some organizations today. An interesting example was at AirBNB where Chip Conley was hired on as a “mentor” and OG in the hospitality business. He was there to build leadership talent, and impart wisdom. Not sure how it worked in practice, but it’s a hopeful case study.

    Meanwhile, there are a ton of folks exploring fractional / interim / contract / project roles. A lot of these leaders have deep wells of experience and wisdom to share. They are dabbling in “coaching” too. However, there isn’t a great pathway for the EE’s to interact with the “rising talent”.

  • Liberal Arts Now More than Ever

    Liberal Arts Now More than Ever

    Jello Jigglers, poetry, business innovation. Creativity is your moat in the AI era

    I found my new career hero: Dana Gioia. Stanford MBA, MA from Harvard in Comparative Lit. Corporate champion. Non-profit leader. Walked away from a small fortune in corporate America to write, teach and “pursue beauty.”

    But, he’s also a compelling example of the liberal arts as a super power for leadership. 

    Business nerds love stories like Gioia’s, a classic combination of insight and marketing. He was running the Jello business, a high margin cash machine that was coasting on its powerful brand. But, the business was in a slow decline and needed something bold to turn it around and get it growing again. 

    It’s really worth clicking through and hearing the story, but, spoiler alert, it’s basically a new use case story. And the world was gifted Jello Jigglers as a result. And the business doubled almost overnight. 

    Liberal arts folks like me love the story, too, because it validates something we’ve always assumed: A solid foundation in the humanities and arts creates leads to a different approach to solution-finding and leadership. 

    He makes a persuasive argument that he, a poet, was the right guy in the right place at the right time. The culture at General Foods at the time had been built on a more rigid, militaristic mindset, designed to perpetuate optimization, marginal improvements, and predictability. What was needed, though, was a rethink, someone to redefine the problem and reimagine the potential solutions. 

    Gioia attributes his success to being a creative, a poet with a number-crunching super power. “I brought creativity that was completely in command of the numbers.” Like a good writer, he was patient enough to take the time to research, listen and understand in order to re-imagine and reconceptualizing something new for the business. And, while he doesn’t state it directly, I bet he was an incredibly persuasive communicator inside the org. 

    Gioia admits he wasn’t a “born” creative, but that part of his personality was developed over time through a youth where the humanities, the liberal arts, were not only supported but encouraged. Maybe he was a little precocious, but he was also surrounded by it in his early seventies, Los Angeles youth. It was all around him. 

    Now More Than Ever

    We all know we’re entering a new era of creativity and innovation in business, society and culture. We’re seeing the signs all around us everyday, but it’s still the early days. Opportunities for new products and ideas will only expand as AI innovations accelerate and the vast oceans of Silicon Valley money fuels a race for the next trillion dollar business. 

    Algorithms won’t make it happen alone. And coders won’t do it on their own. We’ll need creatives. Folks who can spot a genuine need and then pull the tech together to make it happen, to craft the interfaces that make it all seem like magic. 

    Jack Dorsey and Ev Williams saw how valuable it was to get texts with short SMS updates from friends and thus was born Twitter. Seeing the tools on the table and making something useful from them? That’s creative work. Explaining why we need it? That’s creative work. Seeing someone struggle with a challenge and conceptualizing a unique solution? Creative work. 

    We need the liberal arts, now more than ever. 

    We’re already flooded with AI slop, trillions of machine generated words to meet SEO and power the algorithms. But, reading well for comprehension and insights, discerning what’s actually useful and what’s BS? That comes from liberal arts. 

    We’ve got too many visuals flooding into our eyes. TikTok. Youtube. Reels. Jumpy edits on Netflix. But, knowing what you’re seeing and being able to make sense of them? Being able to tell the difference between average and good and great design? That comes from art appreciation. Being able to articulate what’s “good” and why? That’s thinking and writing and persuasion. That comes from composition and writing practice. 

    Generating new ideas? You get a lot of practice when you draw, paint, or sculpt something. Facing a blank canvas and the confidence (or chutzpah) to turn it into something beautiful and provocative? That’s art class. 

    I think the real winners will be those that can do both. It’s not either or. We need people who are technically competent, who have high quantitative literacy AND we need people who aspire to come up with new things that are beautiful and useful. 

    Build Your Moat

    All jobs are going to be threatened by AI soon enough. 

    How will you build your “moat”, your protection against AI? 

    Being able to read cut through the slop. Thinking rationally, in a structured way. Being able to communicate clearly, to persuade with words and ideas. Carefully listening with empathy. Understanding history and the lessons learned there so we can apply them and avoid the mistakes of the past. Being able to argue coherently and understand logic. 

    AI can’t really do that stuff. It’s your way to maintain an edge when you’re working alongside the most powerful AI-driven brain the world has ever seen. 

    It’s Not Too Late: Embracing The Humanities as a Middle Aged Worker

    I found the Gioia interview really inspiring, and I bought his memoir (hey, podcasts work!) to get a little deeper into his mind. More importantly, it got me thinking about how middle/late career folks can do a little renewal work via the liberal arts. 

    And, ideally, we’d all be building a creative practice that puts us in a place where we can go deep, zone out, find flow, and build the skills – empathy, listening, lateral thinking, intuition, taste, an appreciation for design – that can lead us to new insights and ideas. 

    There are some pretty straightforward things that would be enjoyable to pursue, too: 

    • Take an art appreciation class at your local museum. They really help you learn how to see and notice in a different way. But, if you want to do it from home, there are some great resources online (like Steve Martin!) to jump start your curiosity. 
    • Go to a music appreciation class or the symphony or a concert outside your normal taste. I’m going deep into some hip hop right now, mainly as a way to appreciate stuff outside my zone. There are some great podcasts and YouTubeseries, too. 
    • Start drawing. You already know how to do it, but you probably don’t do it enough
    • Read more. Not “self help” or business books. Fiction. Poetry. Adventure. Anything that absorbs you for more than 10 minutes

    Meanwhile, support the liberal arts in your kids schools. Don’t be one of those a-holes that complains about English class, art appreciation, music or history classes. You know those people that say “how is that going to help them get a job!?” Don’t do that. 

    We want smart, curious, broadly skilled kids that generate new ideas and can communicate them well. They’re not learning that in math class (Probably). 

    But, we also need curious, well rounded leaders to guide the work that AI does for and with us.

  • Leaders: Your Data Strategy is Your Business Strategy

    Leaders: Your Data Strategy is Your Business Strategy

    Three recent engagements – A multi-channel retailer, a national media company, and a retail/store chain – have made it clear why so many marketing organizations are still struggling with their data. In these three engagements, reasonably good marketing programs are being questioned by senior stakeholders because the reporting is, well, let’s call it “fluid”.  In all three of those organizations, the marketing team is swimming in data, but can’t generate the necessary reports to drive better decision making and any “Insights” getting shared are more about tactical efficiency vs. whether the strategies are working.

    I think this misalignment is pretty common. For a number of orgs we’ve seen, there are plenty of reports and data dumps. But, the reports aren’t helping the growth and marketing teams make the right, most important decisions.

    There’s an ever present chicken/egg situation: The egg is “we need confidence in the measurement before we invest more” and the chicken is “We need your team to be clear and consistent about what you’re trying to measure and why so we can get you a better measurement plan in place”. 

    For the typical org we’re working with, the “measurement” and data work is downstream (often way, way downstream) from the marketing  and strategy planning. That is, the marketing team will develop their strategies, debate some metrics, and assume there will be a measurement plan, later, of some sort. In effect, they’re betting on the analysts to figure it out.

    The better orgs will develop their data strategies hand in hand with their business strategies. They’ll develop a clear, high-confidence data and measurement plan with the acknowledgement that the strategies need to be tested; there needs to be some way to confirm whether the strategy (not just the tactics) is actually working. Then, the operational plans will include both the actual tactics but also the implementation of new measurement methods. For instance, they’ll simultaneously update their data roadmap and user instrumentation while they’re updating their customer journey (or customer experience) strategies and operating plans.

    The better orgs will  invest early to make sure they can acquire the data needed to measure whether their strategies, tactics and plans are working.  And some orgs will deprioritize strategies and tactics that aren’t measurable. The rationale is pretty straightforward: The more we can measure, the sooner we’ll know if the strategies – the choices we’re making – are the right ones.

    I wish there was a clear, easy answer about why this conundrum is still happening in 2023, more than twenty five years after the start of the digital revolution. It’s obviously complex, but here are three ideas:

    • Leaders assume everything is measurable – Most marketing leaders struggle to understand that not all digital efforts are measurable. A surprisingly large swath of digital marketing efforts can’t be consistently tied to any real business impact. We might have leading indicators (e.g. “consumers reached” by your TikTok), but no real way to measure whether and which consumers did anything afterwards.
    • Move Fast and Break Things – A lot of leaders are still biased towards speed and movement, at almost any cost. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but they aren’t Zuckerberg and they aren’t working in a well funded startup where topline growth matters more than anything. The “move without measure “approach is just rash in most corporate settings.
    • Measurement after the fact – A lot of marketing leaders assume (still!) that you can go back and measure any digital efforts after they have concluded. They don’t know, or haven’t been told, about the work required upfront to get clean measurement
    • Poor discipline on strategies and tactics – There may not be good rigor on aligning objectives, strategies, tactics/key results and business outcomes. In other words, the teams often measure the wrong things. Or, worse, don’t know what they *should* be measuring

    If you are a leader of a growth/marketing team, the solution starts with you. As you’re working through your strategies and operating plans, take the time to engage your reporting/analytics/data teams early. Get them in the room with your team, as you’re developing or updating your plans. Take the time, with the team in the room, to interrogate the plans. Ask the hard questions:

    • How will we know our strategies are working? – What would be the outcomes that would tell us we made the right strategic choices?
    • What would need to be true to measure/validate those strategic choices? – Can we go beyond leading indicators (i.e. visits, clicks, reach, whatever) to get at the downstream outcomes (i.e. usage by segment, conversions by customers acquired by specific campaigns, gross margin, etc).

    Then support the investment in operationalizing the data in parallel with the rest of the marketing work.

    Leaders should acknowledge their role starts with strategy but encompasses the data, too. Great measurement is rarely easy. Discipline up front, means a better chance to get quality data. So, give your data and analytics team a chance to drive real, genuine insights, by doing the disciplined work upfront to clarify what absolutely, positively needs to be measured.

  • Liberal Arts is A SuperPower

    Liberal Arts is A SuperPower

    All day, everyday, I swim in “digital” alongside the coders, designers, and makers that create the internet. When we do our best work, we’re inventing and innovating.  You’d think I look to the scientists and coders to help me crack hard cases at work, but time after time, I find the best ideas come from non-engineers in the room.  When in doubt, I turn to the history majors and English lit nerds to guide me.  They have super powers.

    The press writes stories about the lack of workers with engineering, math and science skills. Those of us running  businesses that depend on digital know there is a legitimate need for all those STEM graduates. But, I am concerned about the decline in the number of Liberal Arts degrees being granted in the US. We need their skills as much as we need people that can design algorithms. America needs more poets!

    Liberal Arts degrees – English/literature, history, philosophy, etc. – create the thinkers and leaders we need to keep innovation happening. Beyond the domain knowledge that these degrees cultivate, they all build skills needed to create and shape innovative solutions. The insights that lead to new ideas come from the habits built doing liberal arts work:  Pattern matching, understanding and defining the contexts, making associations across domains.

    And, just as importantly, Liberal Arts work – reading, writing, creating, analyzing – gives us practice in the skills required to get new to ideas built. Creating new things and making them useful requires working with and translating  abstract concepts clearly enough that others want to invest, literally and figuratively (e.g try explaining what a “platform business model” is to someone that’s never heard that term before). Before the coders and engineers make the ideas real, the liberal arts folks make them understandable and applicable.

    I recently went to the retirement party for a business leader I’ve worked with over the years. She’s had tremendous success, building and selling technology companies worth millions, creating strong organizations where his employees flourished. An undergraduate degree in history pointed her in the direction of her first dream in life: A high school history teacher. But, tech, business and the startup life got in her way.

    I believe her success was partly due to her understanding of how history works. She saw patterns unfolding in the culture and in her industry, patterns she recognized from her study of culture and history, and knew there were openings for for innovators. She was able to communicate beautifully, probably due to her training as a teacher: Clearly, simply, and to everyone. She used anecdotes and stories from American History to make current business decisions relatable. She could explain the hard concepts in language anyone could understand, getting consensus and buy in for her recommendations. I doubt those skills would have been developed as well if she studied math and engineering.

    I’m a tech optimist. I know how important math, science and engineering are for the continued growth of our culture. I am  inspired by the the entrepreneurs who have built the culture-shaping, world-changing tools and platforms that we all use everyday. But, I also know those companies weren’t winners because of their tech. They won because the inventors and founders had folks around them – on their leadership teams, in the investor groups – that could translate the tech breakthroughs to everyone else. The non-techs – the language majors, the history wonks, the poet/writers on the leadership team – were just as important to the success.

    Are you struggling at work to get traction on your idea? Are you feeling a little aimless in your work and want a boost of creativity? Try writing some poetry, go read a little history. Crack open that primer on philosophy. See what happens when you come at those problems in a new way and find your own super powers.

  • Create More, Consume Less

    Has there ever been a better time in human history to be a curious person? Everything you could ever want to learn is right at your fingertips, a click away. It’s amazing to have the resources to find, learn, understand and connect to experts, especially when you really need them. And, of course, our brains love the stimulation and the spark that comes when we lock into a new concept.

    So much to learn, so little time. Getting smarter every day.

    But, we need balance in our lives. In all things. The risk in all the stuff out there – videos, apps, stories, tweets, reels, snaps, etc – is that “learning”, “research” turns into consumption, pure and simple. We can fill our heads with ideas and mental models and theories, but unless we’re doing something with the knowledge, we’re just letting it wash over us. “Learning” turns into distraction.

    The flipside of consumption is creation. Making something new out of the materials we’ve found is a generative act that, when done adequately, results in a helpful contribution.

    We have to put that knowledge into action, put it to work. Certainly, we can apply it in our daily jobs to sharpen our own abilities and improve the quality of the work we do. Better is to share the insights and ideas to make things better, easier, smarter, more rewarding for the folks around us. Ideally, we’re adding to the knowledge base by contributing insights, new methods and genuinely new ideas.

    2022 is still just getting started. This year, I want to create more than I consume. Making music and art at home will keep me creative and engaged in the world. Creating for work – writing, podcasts, webinars, coaching – will give us a chance to push the ball of knowledge forward, and, hopefully, put us in touch with others who are trying to do the same thing.

  • Time is of the Essence

    Tempus fugit. Every knows that in their head, but for some of us it creates a distinct, deep feeling. It’s January 1, 2022. Another year. Another clean slate, in a lot of ways. I can feel it in my body and in my gut that I’m not getting younger, that time is slipping away. I’m proud of what i’ve done with the time I’ve been given, but I want to make sure I make the most of the time I have left.

    2021 was a shitshow in a lot of ways. People I love who died way too early, people i know and admire dealing with significant mental health issues, planetary crisis, democracy in peril, etc. I don’t have to list it out. We all experienced it.

    I’ve got no new insight into time, but I do have a newfound sense of urgency, a new mindfulness about potential distractions.

    Resolution #1 for 2021: Avoid distractions that take my time away from me.

  • In Search of A Leadership Capability Stack

    I just completed a project for a client that included a review of their digital marketing capabilities. Our job was to support the leadership team in developing a roadmap to improve a couple key marketing capabilities so they could go from “good” to “great” over the next couple years. It’s work every marketing leader should do.

    As I met with leaders inside the org and as I tapped other folks I know outside the org for input, i realized the classic consultants dilemma: the roadmap is only the map. You might have the best plan in the world, but you need good drivers to reach the destination.

    After we wrapped up the project, I knew the real work would come down to leadership: Decision making, maintaining prioritization, supporting the team, advising “up” and “around” all while delivering the “good manager” behaviors. Luckily, the folks we worked with were skilled, experienced leaders who were committed to their team and building the teams’ skills, first. (It was inspiring to hear them talk about growing the team’s abilities while rebuilding the capabilities). They are pros. They know how to do the job of leading a team inside a complex org.

    But, i think leading the team is only half the battle. They also have to manage themselves.

    I wish our work would have addressed need all leaders have today to build (or rebuild) their own personal leadership skills. Like any leaders of change, they’re going to need the “traditional” competencies a good manager/director/vp needs – Develop a vision, communicate the vision, create strategies, guide the team, build a plan, deliver results, etc – but they’re also going to need to be high performing at some personal leadership (or personal management) skills to maintain effectiveness. How do you fight politics? How do you recognize when someone else’s skills are getting in your way? How do you sustain the energy and effort to make real change happen?

    Every leader today needs to build their own capacity to drive change and sustain their teams, otherwise the org and the work will suck the energy out of them.

    What are the critical personal leadership capabilities a Director or VP needs to have today, to keep moving forward and not get crushed by change? What’s in your “stack” for leading yourself? Are you working on:

    • Staying centered – Intellectually, emotionally, in the present; When change and a dynamic life/work balance try to throw you off. Can you bring yourself back to the moment, in the present, and find “level”?
    • Staying committed – When there are reasons and pressure to change your mind; when politics or social dynamics may create the wrong sort of influence, do you have the ability to stay committed to your vision, to your decisions
    • Staying responsive – Knowing when to change direction, make a fast decision, pursue an emergent opportunity. Sometimes it means changing priorities. Sometimes it means stopping what’s not working
    • Creating Clarity – Having the ability to create a clear picture of the situation, to cut through ambiguity and “could be” or “Should be” to get at “what is”, and then create action. The ability to bring yourself (and possibly your team) back to focus.
    • Executive Functioning – Are you aware of how you make decisions and how you’re processing and acting on information. Are you responding intuitively all the time? Are you pre-processing and over- analyzing all the time? Do you know how your brain is or isn’t helping you over time?
    • Growing – Do you have the ability to add new skills, build new insights into your own abilities, take in feedback and modify what you’re doing to get better at it? Are you actively developing yourself? Making time to practice and review and reflect in an effort to build and grow?

    I’m working on understanding my own “capabilities” stack as a leader/manager/individual. It’s definitely one of those “the more you know the less you know” situations. So, i’m trying to connect with more leaders to see how they are, in effect, managing themselves. I’m not looking for “hacks” or shortcuts, but i am looking for the ways these leaders are building a practice around their own development.

    Ultimately, i wonder if I need my own Capability Maturity Model and my own roadmap, to get me from “current state” to my desired “future state”. Who do i hire to help me with that?

    Beyond these skills, it’s also clear that every leader needs to have, for themselves, some assets to help them in their work. It’s the sort of obvious stuff – A clear vision for themselves, a trusted set of advisors, tools to help them learn and develop their skills, a sense of their own history, an actual plan to grow and develop – but that’s for another post.

  • Ascenders: Don’t Forget To Lead Your Team

    We work with a lot of leaders who tend to be in the upper third of the management layer in their orgs. Not “C-level”, but real close. Let’s call them ascenders, the ones who have their eyes on moving up a management level relatively soon. 

    The ascenders make choices every day about how to spend their time, where to focus their energies, where to invest a little attention.  A pattern I’ve seen: The larger the org, the more time these ascenders spend influencing and “leading up”, focusing on the teams above them, or worse, their peers at the “ascenders” level. While there is always a need to for communications, influencing, and gaining “alignment”, when it gets out of balance it becomes something else. Some might call it jockeying for position, others might call it politics. Either way, a manager that is preoccupied with “up”, is not prioritizing team leadership. 

    The more they look at their daily and weekly activities through the lens of their own relative position in the matrix, the less time an ascender is spending making sure their team is ready and responsive. They’re making a tradeoff without really thinking too much about it, and the team suffers. 

    I don’t think the ascenders are trying to mis-manage their attention and focus. We’ve all seen the way the corner offices can be a black hole of decisiveness, how the demands for more meetings and time and reports can suck the available calendar time that would have gone to their team. The worse part, these ascenders might not even know they’re doing it. They might think they are “influencing” up in order to clear the way or create “cover” for their team. They might think they are being “servant” leaders. 

  • GSD: The Maker’s Schedule for the CEO?

    GSD: The Maker’s Schedule for the CEO?

    We’re a couple years into our “startup” journey with Fahren and, oh man, am I learning a lot about how NOT to manage my schedule. But, I think there might be a better way.

    While I’m proud of what we’ve been able to do in our short time, I’m one of those guys that can’t stop thinking about how to do more and do it better. As the CEO/Founder, it’s my responsibility to make sure we’re on track and driving this whole thing forward. It’s humbling to say it, but “clock management”- my time management skills (or lack thereof) – might be one of the things that is creating drag for us. If we want to accelerate, I have to be better at GSD.

    My whole career has been an attempt to excel in what Paul Graham calls the “manager schedule”. Its been a schedule designed around 1-2 hour meetings, lot’s of variety throughout the day, and, a blend between quick decisions and deep consideration. Successful managers and directors and VPs were the busy ones, stacked up in meeting. A day full of meetings typically indicated more busy-ness and, by the power of the transitive property, more busy-ness meant “success”. In other words, a typical workday in corporate America is mixed bag of start/stop, high and low pressure, inefficiency. In those days, I had to come into work at 5 AM to get my “deep work” done in the quiet hours before the meetings started. It was a weird schedule, but, I was pretty good at that.

    The team at GoKart Labs (RIP) were super talented makers, some of the best, most creative folks I’ve ever worked with. There, I learned the importance of the “Maker” schedule, where the focus was on the deep work that resulted in smart, clever solutions to gnarly problems, whether it was technical, creative or product strategy. I understood (and still do) the problem of context switching, and the lost creative momentum and productivity that happens when you are on the hook to make something great, but your day is broken up into 1 hour meetings. Back then, because I was a manager at the time, that was sort of a theoretical problem. Now the shit is real to me.

    At Fahren, we’re building the business and, as the CEO/Founder, I’m a both a manager and builder, too. I’m a maker of things: Proposals, strategies, concepts, blog posts, etc. I’m supposed to be both a doer while I work “on” the business (i.e. figure out our healthcare plan options, pick some software for X), a doer while I work “in” the business (e.g. work on client engagements) and a maker (of ideas, posts, industry analysis etc). I’ve been trying to do all of it on a “Managers” schedule and it’s not working especially well. I have to make some changes, fast.

    This isn’t an unexplored dilemma. These days, we’re all dealing with it to some extent. But, it’s one thing when your clock management skills get in your own way, and another when your lack of skills is holding back the rest of your team. Managing the balance between the two types of work is, I believe, a critical skill that any “ready” leader needs to hone. So, I’m going to try a couple adjustments.

    • Workshop Mornings – I’m going to pick at least one morning a week to block off as my “workshop” time, where I can focus on doing the deep work: writing, researching, planning, etc.
    • Meet and Greet Blocks – I’m going to block off a couple afternoons a week for the kind of meetings that would otherwise get interspersed throughout my schedule: Intro meetings, interviews, sales calls, regroups, etc.
    • Office Hours – I’m going to leave my schedule open for a 2-3 hours each week for random, drive-by talks. If folks call or want to video conference, these would be the time slots to do it.
    • No Meeting Fridays – I’m going to try (really hard) to not schedule meetings on Fridays if I can help it. If a client wants to meet, I’ll do it, but I won’t schedule it. In general, Fridays’ don’t seem like the most productive days and, at least in the summer, not much gets done after 1 PM anyway.

    I’m going to try this for the 3rd quarter of 2020 and see how it goes. I’ll make adjustments at the end of September. If you’ve cracked the code on this balance, please let me know how you did it. I’m all ears.

  • Maybe the Most Useful Podcast Episode Ever (For Leaders)

    I’ve listened to this episode of The Knowledge Project 3 times now and I’m pretty sure I’ll listen to it once a quarter going forward.

    This is probably the most useful work-related podcast I’ve listened to (and I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts). This is highly relevant for you if:

    • You’re leading in a highly complex (even chaotic) environment
    • You’re leading a team that is growing
    • If you’re responsible for hiring great talent
    • If you’re committed to building a great culture in your company
    • If you’re trying to get better as a leader

    The key insight is really kind of obvious, but comes across clearly here: We’re not actually rationale beings, that what we’re experiencing may be driven more by what we *feel* vs what is actually happening. Our own brains make up stories about what’s happening and why and these stories – the narratives we fit our experiences into so they make sense to us – get in the way of true clarity about what’s really occurring and how we interpret the experience.

    Jeff Hunter (of Talentism) is a guy that’s been talking to, hiring and coaching top leaders for years. He’s got deep experience making hard choices and he, in a way, unloads a lot of it in this talk. I’m specifically interested in his experiences at Bridgewater, Ray Dalio’s investment firm.

    Hunter makes a persuasive case that we should embrace the confusion we feel when things get don’t go as planned and we should see confusion as a sign that we’re in a position to learn. We should be examining the gap between what we expected to happen vs what actually happened and seek to understand our assumptions and our knowledge gaps.

    Finally, this whole podcast is worth it for three things:

    • How to avoid telling yourself the wrong story about performance (beyond avoiding negative self talk)
    • How to give better constructive feedback
    • How to get smarter about the hires you make

    Background: Shane Parish has been inspiring me via his Farnham Street platform where he focuses on tools that help you make decisions, better. I love the mission, and for years he’s been providing a ton of great resources for leaders. His curiosity is on display in every interview and he might be the perfect guy for this interview.