What do I mean by the executive mindset?

• This Friday, August 16th, at 4pm Pacific, I'll be talking about the executive mindset with Ibrahim Bashir, an experienced product executive. Sign up to watch (and receive a recording if you can't attend live) at https://lu.ma/51t644j3
• If you are interested in being successful as an executive, please fill out this short 1-minute survey so that I can gather more information about what would make this class more valuable.
• Since the last newsletter, I decided to move the class to the Maven platform. Maven's emphasis on cohort-based classes was an inspiration for me to develop this class, so when I received an invitation from them to join their platform, I decided to do it. I'm in the process of moving the landing page over, but you can check out the planned content here.

• Succeeding as an executive does not mean doing more of what previously made you successful in your career. It requires a completely different mindset.
• Talking becomes more important than doing as an executive. Early in your career, you are rewarded for what you do: the problems you solve, the projects you finish, the expertise you demonstrate. But that shifts as you become an executive, responsible for getting work done through others through effective communication.
• Whose interests do you prioritize as an executive? One of the challenges of being an executive is that tension between supporting and protecting the team that reports to you with the needs of the company. You have to find a balance between asking your team to sacrifice for the good of the company, and holding the line to protect your team.
• There are no "right" answers as an executive. Executive leadership means navigating between multiple priorities and values to choose which problems to assign to which teams. You are constantly looking for how to balance different tradeoffs in each moment, such as revenue vs. user experience or short-term vs. long-term. Each of those could be a "right" answer, but which one is most important will change regularly.
  

• Who are you thinking about when you act: other people or your authentic self? I have greater presence and confidence as I have relaxed into my self employed business, because I'm not wasting energy on putting up a mask and pretending to be something I'm not. All of my energy is going into my aligned intention rather than being diverted into worrying about what others think to protect myself.

• I loved the conversation I had with Julie Meyer and Jimmy Edgerton on their AugMentors podcast. Their questions guided me to reflect on the tremendous impact several mentors have had on my life. Check it out on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get podcasts.

• Pragmatism, Neutrality and Leadership by Charity Majors is a thoughtful exploration of what it means to bring "politics" into the workplace. She points out that "As a leader, your job is to succeed", because "your culture serves the business, not the other way around". In other words, a great workplace culture is meaningless if the product or service doesn't sell, because you won't be around to continue the culture, whereas we have many examples of companies that thrive by selling a great product despite a terrible culture. So be thoughtful about where you spend your attention and create norms to avoid unnecessary controversy. I was particularly amused by her coda where she realized she was sounding like the tech bro CEOs who wanted to banish "politics" from the company, but suggested that her approach was to protect the mission of the company and respect the employees, not to protect the ego of the CEO.
• Siderea's essay exploring class dynamics starts from a simple observation that we all know what we mean by "regular working hours", even though many people do not work those hours (restaurants and other service businesses are open nights and weekends, factories have night shifts, etc). This leads to unintentional systemic discrimination: "Anyone who doesn't work "regular work hours" but some other hours finds themselves out of sync, quite literally, with the rhythms of the rest of society."
• Disorderly, Dissenting, Disabled by Helen Rottier with the Disability Visibility Project explains why President Biden's perspective that “Dissent must never lead to disorder” is misguided. As she explains, "This willfully disregards the purpose of protest – to garner attention, to disrupt, to make it difficult or impossible to ignore ongoing struggles and demands. As many have articulated, a protest with permission is a parade. Disorder is the point." She connects that perspective with the wider disability justice movement: "disability disrupts the political status quo because we live in an ableist society that fails to anticipate, accept, or adapt to disability. ... Our disabled lives are perceived as disorder, perceived as dissent, by those in power. I don’t see any reason, then, to continue participating in the status quo. The order is oppressive; let’s dis it."