What years of working with tech executives taught me about Crossing the chasm from individual contributor to manager to executive
You’re 30 years old. You’ve been in the tech game for the past eight years since graduating college. IC work for the first four years. Managing 2-3 people for the past few years. You’re doing well. You’re posting wins. You’re failing and learning from it. But, you’re frustrated seeing others around you promoted to Director, “Head of”, VP, etc. You want to take on more responsibility, manage larger teams, and achieve bigger goals. What do you do?
Here’s what you need to do to go from being seen as a strong individual contributor/manager to being seen as an executive.
1. Align your individual goals not just to your department's goals. Push one step further and align with the company's goals.
When speaking about how you hit your goals, convey why that matters in the context of your department's goals AND your company's goals. Care about the company's future, not just your own or your teams. Do you think the CEO/Founder wakes up each day thinking just about your department? No. They’re thinking about ALL teams: marketing, engineering, product, design, sales, etc, etc, etc, etc. Challenge yourself to think about how what you're doing influences the company either positively or negatively. If it's not helping the company, but helping your department, maybe you should challenge yourself and your manager on that: are we doing busy work? Should we stop doing this? Why does this matter? Ask the tough questions.
2. Drive results. You have to win and prove measurable gains. Talk is cheap.
Continue to focus on doing great work. Those who lead are those who know how to get the job done and put wins on the board.
3. Communicate (overcommunicate) wins, failures, and learnings across departments.
"But that's my boss’s job." False. Grow up and be a leader. That's your job, too. Find ways to communicate your wins beyond the walls of your department. Don’t be afraid to share your failures, and what you learned from them also. Here are a few examples:
Release notes (product release notes, marketing release notes, sales release notes, etc). These are updates that are important to the entire org. Find a cadence to share these wins. If no one on your team is doing this yet, take the initiative. See what type of feedback you receive. If live-time releases become annoying, dial it back to a weekly or monthly release note update. Keep all release notes in a master google doc or internal tool so anyone in the company can refer back to past releases. This is common in product/software teams but can work for any team.
Office hours. Host an open office hour each week on the same day and same time (ex: Thursdays at 3-4 PM) and invite anyone in the company to ask questions and bring things to your attention that they need help with that involve your/your department’s skillsets.
Monthly (or weekly) lunch and learns. Pick a Friday at noon to hold an open zoom. Invite people to bring their lunches and learn about what you're doing.
4. Embrace the values of the company and practice them aggressively.
Leaders on an executive team should not only share the values of the company but practice them religiously. Example: Here are my values at The Operators. Two of my values are “being Bostonian transparent” (telling it like it is), and “moving with extreme urgency.” All executives on my team need to inhabit these values. If not, they won’t work at our company. Our values are critically important for the successful growth of the business and for servicing our clients. Ask yourself: Are there ways I could better exemplify our company values?
5. Be a talent magnet. Ask your closest homies for feedback on this.
Are you attracting new talent to the company who have worked with you in a previous job? Are you gaining a reputation internally and externally as someone who cares about others and their careers? Are you an empathetic manager? Can you inspire people? Does your team want to tackle the goals you set out and take on initiatives/projects that you want to test or launch? If no one is willing to follow you into battle, you don’t deserve a seat at the table. This isn’t something you can fake. But how do you know how you’re stacking up? Pretty simple: Go and pull five people who are closest in a room and ask them for direct feedback on your strengths and weaknesses. Choose two coworkers. Choose two friends. Choose a family member. (Or some variation of this) and ask them for their honest opinions. Until you are self-aware of your pros and cons, no one will follow you. You will be followed when you know yourself.
Go get it.
Durkin
