Read on Twitter
thread of advice I wish my 23-year old self had, on interacting with the c-suite. hard-earned at public co and startup doing board decks/meetings, strategic planning, sTrAteGy, M&A and chief of staff stuff
execs are usually so removed from the details that you need to start at high abstraction. they may test you by drilling into details, but the test is more about napkin math, logical construction and comparison to priors. nobody is going to run a model to fact check
act like you belong. you have more of the facts, tho likely less context. treating execs like colleagues (carefully!) helps build mutual respect
ignore the impostor syndrome. you were asked to be in the room for a reason, not just to click "next" on powerpoint... probably.
ignore the impostor syndrome. you were asked to be in the room for a reason, not just to click "next" on powerpoint... probably.
being friends with the EAs is the difference between getting a decision this week vs next month. also they're under-appreciated with really hard jobs. you'd be surprised how much camaraderie builds from doing a split search of the floor for the CFO https://twitter.com/chiefofstuffs/status/1327394570154303488
Being smart and pointing out problems only gets you a B+. A players have to come with solutions, ideally partially implemented
Relationships matter. You’re going to end up making last-minute fire drill requests across the org, and it pays off to build goodwill beforehand. https://twitter.com/provisionalidea/status/1327407811341418496
Corollary of this is that debating about facts is a common way meetings get derailed. Don’t let this happen. Your goal is to get to decisions or action items. https://twitter.com/chiefofstuffs/status/1327406346484924417
once you get to action items you need to wrap things up https://twitter.com/tarstarr/status/1285699481820958723
writing down everything that said and then doing it is a recipe for doing pointless work. if you're in charge of note-taking you can to drop/modify action items so the list makes sense. risk is that you get it wrong and make someone mad https://twitter.com/chiefofstuffs/status/1319392828976345088
the c-suite can't just order ppl to do stuff. there's also:
- variable execution quality (are they gonna fuck up)
- variable compliance w/ orders (will they actually do it)
- risk of disrupting competing priorities
- personality factors & morale (they hate each other)
- variable execution quality (are they gonna fuck up)
- variable compliance w/ orders (will they actually do it)
- risk of disrupting competing priorities
- personality factors & morale (they hate each other)
factorio is a good model - companies are delicate machines too complex to hold entirely in the head. you have to be thoughtful about making changes because there's nth order effects that happen outside visibility https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1308284091142266881?s=20
