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Leaders Letter Newsletter Leadership

Leaders Letter 168 – The 5 Simple Questions To Ask This Week To Improve Prioritisation & Performance

Ask Better Questions & More Often To Improve Work & Performance

Dear leaders, this week I am introducing 5 questions to clarify situations and remove ambiguity.  

These questions are basically my frequently asked questions from the last three months, the questions come from recent conversations, coaching sessions and helping leaders with personal development questions from expert calls.  

  1. For when meetings and performance aren’t flowing:
    Ask: What context am I/are we missing? 
    Why: Simple questions and stopping poor meetings to gain realignment are critical 
  2. For when you need deeper feedback loops:
    Ask: What is your analysis here?
    Why: It is critical it is not first opinions or thoughts. The analysis framing allows people to dive into issues and create compelling arguments for both sides. 
  3. For when ruthless prioritisation is required:
    Ask: If we were to stop this activity today what negative impact would it have? 
    Why: Most people default to more and have a bias for doing more, being ruthless and clearly calling out tasks will reduce strain and cognitive load on teams. 
  4. For when to understand output at a greater level:
    Ask: what is x’s performance like over the last nine months? 
    Why: Results are often too binary. Performance allows you to understand the wider impact and uncover the deeper actions and decisions taken. 
  5. For when to understand performance and productivity: 
    Ask: What expectations do you have for this project? And how are you prioritising your tasks within this project? 
    Why: When performance is struggling and when team members feel stretched autopilot kicks in and many team members just start, very often understanding the required steps are missed out and prioritises these tasks are overlooked and underappreciated. 

This week’s focus action is to ask these 5 questions when required and move your business forward with smarter questions and reduce the bias for more and have an eye for prioritised (aka smarter) work. 

Have a good week and land in your inbox next week,

Danny Denhard

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Leaders Letter Newsletter Leadership

Leaders Letter 160 – 10 Of The Best Ways To Improve “Team” Subculture

Dear leaders, In recent weeks I have shared insights into how to think about your team, management and leadership levels and how to connect to those around you. 

In a recent presentation to a C-suite, I suggested that they were confusing everyone: how? They had:  

  • C-Suite – CEO, COO etc 
  • Leadership Team – C + SVPs
  • Management Team – Department Leads + HR 
  • Next Gen Team – The Heads of 
  • They also had an X-team for good measure too – that was their executive team and advisors in a big group who mostly spoke about the numbers and performance (very similar to the C-Suite) 

The difference for most is a title and how they are tiered internally. 

For others it is how they represent the company, which teams they might serve and who is the first team, this first team principle is something that has been around in management training for years, it’s the team you spend the most time with and who you often operate alongside most. 

If you are on the C-suite your team is 99% of the time, the C-Suite team or if named differently the Senior Leadership Team. 

If you are a department lead, your team is most likely the team you manage. 

When you are senior and trusted you will likely be across numerous teams and that’s when your time is precious you need to understand which team is your primary and which is your secondary and so on.  

I am a big believer in there are actually numerous cultures within organisations, there is one but they are influenced by the ongoing micro cultures of your company. I tend to refer to these mirco cultures as sub-cultures, each team or unit of people are big influencers on the wider company culture, big decisions do change how the people within your company operate and will impact how they perform. 

I have been in challenging times when the most senior leadership team is in dispute or has long-term conflict and it really impacts those around them, underneath them and can creep into one-to-ones and departmental meetings. This is where seasoned operators use and abuse their political intelligence and sends the wrong waves through the organisation.  

Team Subculture Advice

I’m usually asked for specific details of how I’ve helped my teams in the past so here are ten common recommendations I make to clients today.  

Leadership Team Level 

  1. All Company Stand-Ups – These are optional standups for the whole company to attend; this included weekly performance and revenue numbers, it included top-level information of what we discussed at the leadership team meeting (to allow the team to understand how we are tackling issues, discussing the future and where we see opportunities etc) and our actions and we invited anyone to ask questions and present their take. 
  2. Friday Stand Down – as a leadership team, we were all relatively new to each other. We had an informal debrief every Friday afternoon before we left and it was what we needed to blow off steam, have a laugh and connect on a personal/professional level. In most leadership teams you rarely have a chance to laugh and it’s incredibly important you find your mutual humour zone and what is acceptable within your team. 
  3. Meeting Captains – there’s nothing more annoying if you are that person who always takes notes, I introduced a rotating meeting captain who would lead meetings and be responsible for agendas, action points and notes, it was a way to share respect and responsibilities and not just be on the “leader” to lead meetings. 
  4. Extra / Management Fika – a coffee and a snack together following the Swedish tradition. Fika worked well with leaders who don’t work together often or have less of a personal connection. Fika can work well and can work remotely – it’s worth exploring how you can introduce time blocking to encourage Fika. 

Management Team Level 

  1. Onboarding – Very often you will work with people on the MT who is new to the company or new to the management team; they very often need onboarding to the management team, they need to understand how this management team works and what success is for them on the management team. Onboarding is essential and almost always overlooked – I created the onboarding flow and a cheat sheet alongside a record of important items we had discussed recently and how we made and got to decisions. 
  2. Decision Documents – I have recommended a number of times on leaders letters; the decision document helps the company to understand how decisions were made, how, who and why. It’s an invaluable tool for transparency and takes minutes to update and share with the org. This is an open document everyone has access to. 
  3. Up-and-comers lunches – a virtual or in-person lunch where up-and-comers within the business could be taken for lunch and discuss the company, and get to know senior execs. This isn’t just for the up-and-comer it is for the leaders to get to know their colleagues and understand how the level or two below are operating and understand any concerns they may have.    

D Team Level 

  1. Reverse Mentorship – Mentorship isn’t always senior mentoring the “junior”. Reverse mentorship is the smart way to help spread knowledge and insights across the business. It is a way for less senior members or discipline experts to help more senior people understand how the company is operating lower down, understand the discipline and learn from internal experts. Be mindful of the time and how many reverse mentorship sessions you have or enable.
    There is an upcoming leaders letter around your 160 hours of work per month and making the most out of time management.   
  2. Champions Presentations – Champions are experts in their field, aka subject matter specialists (Super ICs as it has been referred to recently) who go into management and leadership meetings and present rather than the Department lead. This is important for exposure to the environment, training on what is expected and tolerated in these meetings and giving the Champion the opportunity to connect with senior leadership. Historically this may have been seen as Departmental management not to present on the behaviour of your team, however, empowering your team members and bringing in champions will improve how important tactical layers are thought through and delivered on (alongside being a time-saving exercise). 
  3. Cross Champions Training – this was something that I rolled out as long as 14 years ago. Inviting international colleagues to the U.K. and having a few days going through plans, learnings we came across and sharing knowledge whether that’s day-to-day essential cross champions like excel training, latest tools to use and how to use them to one example was someone was a popular external keynote speaker and provided speaking training to the department. 

This week’s focus item is to implement the most applicable pieces of advice, I always strongly recommend rolling out a decision document, champions presentations and meeting captains for the quickest impact and lowest effort. 

Have a good week and I’ll land in your inbox next week,

Thanks,

Danny Denhard

Five Other Essential Company Culture Must Reads

Leaders Letter 159 – The Company Number 2
Leaders Letter 153 – Critical Distance & The Power Of Creating Space
Leaders Letter 145 – Career Care & Showing You Want More For Your Team Members
Leaders Letter 125 – Company Culture Lessons From Apple, Burberry, Google, And Uber
The Best Company Culture Books To Read 
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Leaders Letter Newsletter Leadership

Leaders Letter 159 – The Company Number 2

Dear leaders, the fight for the number two position has been something coveted for many years. 

I recently received an email from a leaders letters subscriber asking about “the mythical number two role” so I wanted to tackle it in a dedicated leaders letter. 

Being the right-hand person, the next strong voice and then the trusted partner is something many professionals try to acquire and manufacture their way into this converted slot. 

Being trusted by the number 1 (CEO or founder) is a double-edged sword and one you might just struggle with.  

The Expectations 

  • Your expectation is your colleagues around you have to listen
  • Your colleagues will come to you for buy-in and support – improving your position as the number 2 
  • Your colleagues will ripple this news through the organisation and the rest of the business takes this on 
  • The rest of the org will listen to your every word and look to you for answers and additional support 
  • Leverage (leverage the people, leverage the unofficial title, leverage the opportunity) 
  • The validation will create respect 
  • You are next in line  

The Usual Reality 

  • The number two spot is often an impossible position 
  • Your colleagues around the exec table do not trust you, this sends signals to the rest of the org not to trust you  
  • You can be seen as the #1’s puppet – only delivering on their requirements and actions 
  • When there is a requirement to challenge the number 1 you will be torn to protect and defend vs do what is best for the wider org or your department 
  • Your own team’s trust often erodes over time – you become dislocated from your team and your loyalties are questioned constantly 
  • Your own “number two” will take aim at your position and authority and very often unpick your position at the seams while you play an unofficial company number 2 role 
  • The number two often doesn’t take the leaders chair when they leave or are removed 

2 Political 

Very often the number two is posturing, it’s a political minefield and you as the number two have to be so politically savvy, you have to embrace your IQ, EQ and PQ in rotation and this can be exhausting.

The company culture is often manipulated the most by this number two person and can work for and against them, most often going against them as they are in the most questioned position within the business. 

When company culture is so important to your performance many companies make the mistake of entrusting the number two to make the right strategic plays and bets to improve the company culture. Very few will put the company first when their own personal stakes and game plan have been years to play out. 

Waves Of Change 

Despite the largest company trends, over the last 15 years, it has been CFOs transitioning to CEOs, then COOs transitioning and most recently it has been CPO who takes on the CEO role once their boss moves on. 

CFOs, COOs and CROs are often in the number two position, you will see this play out over and over in mid to large businesses and often in smaller businesses or startups you might even see co-founders having to battle it out with external “adults” to take over the reins of the business. 

Very rarely does the internal number two actually take over from exiting founders or co-founders and often the move onto another business is harder for them. 

Likely Outcome – Interim 

Like in sports, you become the caretaker manager, you take temporary charge of the team. You will know quickly how your tenure will go, likely quickly and then you have the fight all over again. 

In business the number 2 can take over as an interim lead, however, it is often seen with resistance and a full-time leader comes in to replace the interim. 

Big change in business is rarely a good thing for the supposed number two and this is often overlooked by them. 

Having been positioned as the number two on a number of occasions it rarely worked out for me – going into any situation like this with eyes wide open will only benefit you and the business. 

Protect You & The Business: Are you the number 2 within your business, how have you protected yourself and prevented many of these called-out issues to protect you and move the business forward? I trust so. 

This week’s focus action is to review how you are positioned within the business and understand how your position might be negatively impacted by the perceived “rank” you are in or represent. 

Thanks and have a great week 

Danny Denhard

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Leaders Letter Newsletter Leadership

Leaders Letter 150 – The Ten Essential Leadership Questions To Ask Each Other This Week

The Ten Essential Leadership Questions To Ask Each Other This Week - leaders letter 150

Dear leaders, there has been a lot made of disagreeing and committing in the recent macroeconomic times. 

The chances are you are in either of two camps;
(1) Survive at any cost: have had to reduce the size of your department or lose whole teams, you have likely lost some budget and have to revisit another 9-box exercise.
Or
(2) Attempt to grow without spending the same budget you had at the turn of the financial year and requests for more headcount are not entertained. 

Either camp is hard, but you are being pressured to either get on board or disagree and commit to where you have landed or where the HiPPO is driving the business. 

The Backstory: The 13th Amazon leadership principle “have backbone; disagree and commit” has become a default principle in many boardrooms to ensure everyone is on the same page around the significant changes, whether that’s hiring, headcount freezes, company restructuring or mass layoffs. 

(Re)Connect With Leadership Colleagues 

In hard times, it can be a real challenge to be a manager, it can be a real challenge to continue to be a leader and support those around you.
You can become unsure of your role and your own future and connecting to these huge shifts can feel like a constant uphill battle. This is where I recommend you deepen your working relationships and keep improving the bonds within your leadership team.
(FYI here’s how to build better management teams with management pods). 

It is essential to refresh and reconnect with your colleagues when times are good but when they are at their most challenging I find a refresh is group therapy and can be group-defining.

Here are the 10 questions to ask each other:  

  1. What have you achieved in your career? 
  2. What piece of work are you most proud of working here? 
  3. What do you want to achieve here? 
  4. What inspires you every day? 
  5. What was the worst day of work here?
  6. What was the best day of work here? 
  7. Tell me about when you made a big work-related mistake and learnt the hard way? — And what was the lesson?  
  8. If you had to take three colleagues from three different departments to run a secret mission to save the company, who would you take and why? 
  9. If you were told to reduce your department by 50% what process would you take to do this? 
  10. If you were to revisit one project to optimise for better success what would it be and why? 

These questions can be asked in many settings and work from one to one, one to few (small groups of the management) but ideally in offsite settings as an exec leadership team. This is where open conversation will flow and your colleagues will want to connect with you on a personal and professional level. 

Why Ask And Answer These 10 Questions? These questions take real thought, a chance to show you can be vulnerable and a chance to create materials for the management team to onboard others onto the management team and add their experiences.  

This week’s focus action: Create a time slot where you and your colleagues run through the ten questions and learn about each other and what drives and motivates you and see how you could form a squad or SWORM to complete a secret mission within the company. 

Have a great week and remember IQ will only get you so far, EQ and PQ will take you and your business further. 

Thanks,

Danny Denhard 

Here are 3 other essentials tips to follow to improve leadership within your business this week: 

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Leaders Letter Newsletter Leadership

Leaders Letter 149 – Can The Undercover Boss Act Work For Your Business?

Can The Undercover Boss Act Work For Your Business? - leaders letter 149
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Dear leaders, a simple but big question this week: 
Could a stint of working undercover leadership help your business to improve? 

For years we have seen numerous press clippings, TV shows and social media accounts devoted to a high-level exec becoming an employee again and experiencing a number of reported and real common issues.  

PR Stunt Or Connection Builder?

It has always been seen as a PR stunt, “the big-time boss” goes back to getting their hands dirty to find out how their company operates outside of the boardroom. 

But can this tactic actually be a friction-removal exercise?

Want Recent Examples?
  • The Deliveroo founder (food delivery app) William Shu often references him going back to deliver food – this has rarely helped Deliveroo with recruitment (despite what the PR-driven narrative will have you believe)
  • GOJEK (Indonesia’s super-app) founders delivered services via their on-demand app for a month
  • Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber’s CEO) recently drove his own Tesla for Uber under an alias and then after the experiment, agreed with drivers (there were many issues Uber had to address for their drivers and ignored before this experiment) – this has landed well in the business press but the cultural press is having a field day on this tactical approach 

Marketplace For Change? Recently we have seen a number of marketplace CEOs take on the challenge and experience what their drivers or delivery drivers do and they have in short come to similar conclusions.

Sympthonising With Your Customers: 

The issue with marketplaces is, you always have to hear the two or three sides of the marketplace voice their opinions, it can be hard to understand which is more pressing and it is hard to see it or prioritise this question within the boardroom if you don’t have first or second-hand experiences.
Especially when you are attempting to balance demand and supply side feedback. 

The question you might be asking now is… Why take this big leap when you have teams dedicated to this? 

Internal Trust & Storytelling Matters

NPS surveys, user feedback sessions and customer support tickets are only as good as the story that is told by the Customer Support, UX or Product teams and the trust these department heads have within the leadership circle.
These can come down to the words on the PowerPoint presentation or the categorisation in the Excel spreadsheet.
Often these forms of feedback are dismissed if there is a weak story or no picture you can genuinely connect with showing the issues. Pairing this with a high cost per ticket attached to fixing these issues these are then deprioritised. 

Coachable Moment; Dive into these issues and understand how you can address these and embrace the power of video to see first-hand the issues.
Often these user stories are too long or too opinion based, match the user stories with insights before feeling like you have to put on the uniform or download the driver app etc. 

PR Or Product Improvement? Some CEOs will struggle with being part of this, others will embrace the opportunity to drive headlines, and others will want to experience what their employees are.   

Hint: Be the product improvement leader (not the PR-hungry leader), don’t seek this out for headlines, headlines work for and against you, seek this out to improve the product and understand how employees feel from the driver, to the internal team feeding back to the data analysis team struggling to get cut through from the way they might be retelling issues.  

One pitful to look out for; is when you experience something first hand it can seem to be much bigger than it is as you can become biased versus stack ranking all issues together.  

The Internal Question To Ask: Should you and can you as a leader truly embrace this type of deep research to understand how the company operates out of your view and spreadsheets and make a real material difference? 

Share

This week’s focus action: Consider how you can fully embrace getting into customer problems and connect with both company problems but also the customers’ problems. 

The best leaders truly understand both issues and can then help to support from the front on these and then put the right prioritisation on them. 

Have a great week and remember leadership has many forms, either smaller steps of helping others story-tell better, listening more to quant and qual feedback or getting deep into research to experience issues first and second hand. 

Thanks,

Danny Denhard

Thanks,

Danny Denhard

Image source WSJ dedicated article on Uber CEO going undercover

Looking for a coach? I have limited slots available, find out more about my coaching services here
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Leaders Letter Newsletter Leadership

Leaders Letter 148 – Have You Lost The Special Thing That Makes You Unique?

Have You Lost The Special Thing That Makes You Unique? - Leaders Letter 148

Dear leaders, a few weeks ago, I took my puppy to get his first groom. For me and my girlfriend, it was like sending off our first child to the nursery for the very first time. 

We were a couple of minutes late, I hate being late it’s one of my bug bearers, and picking him up and with a mad dash, we were only a couple of minutes late. 

The groomers were brilliant from the first micro-moment, they asked if it was ours by his name, they told us what they were going to do and not do and they asked us if we wanted a call halfway through with an update or a reminder call just before to make our way back to their shop. 

It instantly put us at ease, they gave us clear instructions and one option to select, reducing our choice fatigue and nervousness. 

The 90 minutes whizzed by and they called when they said they would, they were super friendly when we came through the door and explained the process and how our puppy got on. Thankfully, he got on very well and importantly it was an experience, a positive experience and it made us know we would be going back. It would be his spa. 

Special Touch: They gave great follow on recommendations and said how much they liked him and even put a bow on his collar as a little extra touch. 

The experience wasn’t just for our puppy it was for us too, the groomers knowing how we would feel, what we would want to experience and where we may feel anxious. The special little touches really stood out, the bow as a lite touch branded reminder of the experience. A product manager or UX expert would have been super proud if they had engineered this flow. 

Why was it special? They said hello to the puppy by his name, they made us feel at ease straight away, they did what they said and promised, they gave us clear instructions and an option to suit us, they communicated very clearly and gave our puppy an experience and a special treat. This wasn’t just a transaction, it was an experience for the three of us.  

To me, this is one of the biggest and simplest forms of leadership you can have.

Do You Still Have That Special Sauce? 

This got me thinking, so many brands have lost that special edge, that secret touch that goes over and above their competitors.  

A few more examples: 

Amazon’s Famous Strategic Flywheel Drives Their Core Customer Centric Decisions
  • “Prime Expectations” – Amazon delivers when they say they will, in their simple packaging. They have set the tone for others to deliver within 24 hours at a fair price (mostly) and be given numerous prime perks like prime music, prime video etc. Their famous flywheel makes it difficult for anyone to compete at scale 
  • Zappos’ famously upgraded customers shipping on their first order 
  • Superhuman (the email client) 30-minute hands-on personalised onboarding (aka productivity coaching) for every customer 
  • Five Guys and their extra scoop of fries 
  • Jumbo (Dutch supermarket) introducing slow lanes so customers who want to chat at the checkout can

This week’s focus action: Work through how far away are you from what made your brand or service special?
Maybe it’s time to embrace that expert within your business as of leaders letter 146

How far away from that uniqueness you once offered are you? 

Alternatively, a personal quest: Ask yourself, have you lost that edge? How far away from your secret sauce or superpower are you now? 

It made me rethink a couple of elements and ensure I continue my special touches in my mentor process.

Thanks and have a good week,

Danny Denhard

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Focus News Leadership

The Focus Coaching System Explained

The Focus Coaching System Explained

Exec coaching is an essential area where managers become leaders, where founders go from operator to leader and where many find out they have a lot of work to take on.

What many c-suite execs are forgetting, exec coaching is for every c-suite member not just the CEO and COO.

Problem You’re Faced With: Many coaches follow the same ten points, they very rarely create bespoke systems, they very rarely are hyper personalised to you (as a lead, you will be bundled up with all other leads) and rarely take into consideration the nuance of your position and the business you are operating in.

Problem Addressed With The Focus Coaching System

This is why the new focus coaching system was created and built to apply for any c-suite member, any lead on their way to become a true leader and to take department heads from a manager to a business leader.

The coaching system was built from the ground up and proven to work across the c-suite to Department leads, from Founders and CEOs to COOs, CMOs to Product leads and the raising stars of organisations.

The Focus coaching system takes into consideration of the modern work environment, embracing in person, hybrid and fully remote coaching, so here is a run down of the system and why it is critically different:

The Focus Coaching System Explained

  • Built Differently: Proven system based on the foundations of sports coaching including sports drills and analysis of therapy and structuring around therapy sessions – this is to maximise your time and output
  • Workshops Not Chats: Coaching sessions are “workshops” (with drills) based training and 1-2-1 coaching – this is to ensure you are moving forward and have tangible outputs and is results orientated
  • Issues, Jams & Situations: We will workshop issues, and potential issues and revisit previous situations to improve your management skills and optimise decision making skills
  • Skills-Based Development: you will evolve in every session and adapt your training based on business needs and your personal profile
  • Manageable Time Slots For You: We are all busy, therefore the workshops are shaped around 1-hour workshop coaching sessions (typically based on 10+ sessions) to focus on your personal and professional development
  • No Wasted Time: Both hybrid and in person coaching, this is designed to help you maximise your time and have a personalised playbook to move your performance and the business performance forward
  • Homework! It is a homework based system, you have to be invested, homework is an essential part of your development and carrying on the training post workshops is critical in your investment and development
  • Partner Not Payment: The system is designed to be your long-term partner and support system not just a payment
  • IQ, EQ (emotional intelligence) & PQ (political intelligence) Based Coaching: IQ will be improved by traditional “hard skills” development, EQ will be developed on life skills (there is no such thing as soft skills) and PQ, improving how you operate and mature as a leader with your business
  • Yes, Hard Work: It will be hard work and I will hold you accountable at every step: You will receive clarifying questions, you will be challenged, you will receive kick back on answers and choices made
  • ROI Positive: You will see your investment returned from session #2
  • Proven Framework & Exercises: I provide proven frameworks and exercises to improve operational skills, improve situations you or your team are struggling with, helping to mature and up-skill you and those around you
  • Roll Out To Your Own Team: Coaching system you can then roll out to your team

Interested? Get in touch below:

coach @ focus.business or through

I need focus coaching
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Company Culture Leaders Letter Newsletter Leadership

Leaders Letter 138 – David Siegel 5 Questions

5 leadership questions with meetup.com CEO David Siegel

Dear Leaders, this week I ask five questions to David Siegel. David is the CEO of meetup.com & led Meetup through the pandemic, for a company that is built around connection and real-life community you can imagine the hugely negative impact and the fight for survival David and his team went through and how they bounced back, through brilliant and deliberate leadership.

David’s book is an essential read, it is my essential company culture books to reads, I also buy it for my exec coaching clients and when I run workshops I enforce the exec team to read Decide & Conquer: 44 Decisions That Make or Break All Leaders.

Onto the Q&A, this is fascinating and brilliant.

Q1. You led Meetup throughout the pandemic in near-impossible circumstances, what is the biggest lesson you took away as a business (and people) leader? 

When the pandemic hit, Meetup faced an existential crisis that could have destroyed our 18-year-old company. Until then, the focus of our business had always been about bringing people together IRL (in real life) to make connections.  When COVID-19 hit, we had to ask ourselves whether our mission was more about meeting IRL or about fostering connections. Our answer was clear: we are a connections company. For the first time in our history, we allowed groups to meet online. And it was so fortunate that we did. Online Meetup events and groups helped millions of our members get through the most isolating periods of pandemic. 

I won’t downplay how rocky that period was. Running a company called “Meetup” in a time when no one was meeting was a tremendous challenge.  We saw decreases in many key metrics including the number of events on our platform and event RSVPs, which negatively impacted our revenue. As a leader, my focus was on transparency. If the company had challenges, my job was to address those challenges head-on so we could find solutions. Building trust during a crisis by sharing the good, bad, and ugly was critical. The crisis is behind us, but our culture of trust and transparency will continue to strengthen the company.

Q2. You wrote brilliantly about your 44 decisions to make and break all leaders, which one do you feel are the most important to start with? 

First, thank you. Of all my decisions for new and seasoned leaders, I think I need to start with what I call “Decision 0,” which is deciding whether you should take the job in the first place. 

One of the most hazardous biases in decision making is the sunk cost fallacy. This is the tendency for people to be biased toward actions because they overvalue the time, money, or other investment they’ve “sunk” into an action. Most of us don’t appreciate that this time spent preparing for anything is gone. Our job is to make the best decision we can. People are often reluctant to reject a job offer after they invested so much time in interviewing. The fact is, the time spent interviewing is gone and it has no bearing on whether the job is a good fit.  

Before I became the CEO of Meetup, I went through no less than 27 interviews with WeWork (our corporate owner), followed by meetings with every Meetup vice president. After three months and hundreds of hours of interviews, it would have been easy to accept the position based on my time commitment alone, but I knew that time was gone. I needed to make a decision based on the facts about the role and the company I’d be working with, and I strongly considered not accepting the role in the first place. 

I caution all leaders (and even non-leaders) to make the right decision for you and not be influenced by how much time was spent leading up to a decision.

Q3. The power of community is a key message throughout your book, what do you think CEOs (and their leadership teams) should truly understand about community and then embracing community into their business? 

Hundreds of studies have found that community is one of the most important elements to both a happy work life and personal life. Yet, having a strong sense of community is also on the decline in nearly every country and age demographic. Early humans relied on community to survive and the need for community is hard-coded in us.

Meetup is the ultimate source for building community, whether it’s personal or professional. Many companies—IBM, Microsoft, Google, etc.—use Meetup to enhance their communities and build user networks. Community drives employee retention, motivation, collaboration and ultimately results in greater success. As more companies move to remote work, the importance of community is becoming more evident. It is incumbent on every leader to incorporate community building into their business.

Q4. What are your three leadership non-negotiables for your exec leadership team? 

First, no assholes. The members of my executive team are all kind people. We spend more time working with colleagues than we do our spouses in some cases. I only want to work with high integrity, empathetic individuals. Life is too short to do otherwise.

Second, they must have a data-driven approach. Leaders shouldn’t ignore their instincts when making a decision, but we always need to look at what the data tells us. We need data to size gauge the impact, priority, and opportunity of any choice.

Last, I look for the ability to embrace change. Leadership requires adaptability. And if a leader is not flexible then they won’t be able to steer the ship for their team during times of crisis. The ability to listen and change one’s approach based on data and experience is one of my top priorities when looking for a leader.

Q5. How has your professorship at Columbia university helped you to develop your leadership? 

I’ve always believed that when you teach you have the greatest opportunity to learn. For nearly ten years, I have been teaching undergraduates at Pace University and then graduate students at Columbia in the entrepreneurship and strategic planning program. My former students have gone on to found startups that have helped millions of people around the globe. Having even a small impact on their path to success is incredibly enriching. One of the reasons I wrote Decide & Conquer was due to my interest in helping people beyond the 70 students in my class. The book has now been read by more than 15,000 people and is being translated into Chinese and other languages. I consider the book to be an extension of the concepts we learn in class. I’m incredibly fortunate to have the opportunities to teach and learn that I do.

Links 

Go and have a great week and I’d love to hear from you about how you are going to take inspiration from David moving forward.

Thanks,

Danny Denhard

Be Inspired By More Leaders Letters

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Leaders Letter Newsletter Leadership

Leaders Letter 136 – What Are The Factors At Play (With Free Framework)

What Are The Factors At Play (With Free Framework) - Leaders Letter Newsletter

Dear Leaders, the most under-respected and most under-discussed element within leadership meetings and around the boardroom is “what are the factors at play” and how do we influence and then action them. 

Knowing The Factors At Play: I recently discussed the forces at play with a new business unit with a large organisation’s leadership team and they struggled with being able to know what were their forces at play, how to find them and then understanding which were internal forces and then external forces. 

Forces at play are often out of your control, there are shifts within markets or industries that you can never influence but will greatly impact your business for a number of years ahead. 

Economic Factor: Right now we are all experiencing a tough economic environment and many customers have done the wise thing for them to cut their spending, there is a however, not understanding the nuanced factors at play is almost criminal to how you operate and how you then review teams performance and company performance.

Covid Chaos To Crisis: If you have read or listened to recent quarterly earnings (since Q2 of 2020) they have had to blame external factors, when then pushed many CFOs and CEOs struggle to articulate what the deeper factors were (apart from supply chain issues) and how they could change these and influence positive change without many layoffs or numerous rounds of layoffs. 

Layoffs for big tech have unfortunately been necessary for most, however, addressing the people side of balance sheet management only doesn’t often change the actual performance of a business, often just the spreadsheet view and you will bad practices, poor decision-making and other operating holes too late and then more misses for quarters to come.   

Action: Making Factors Work – Understanding the factors, then categorising them and creating a plan of action (applying to your one company-wide strategy) and then through each departmental plan helps you to reshape and reframe issues. 

Here is how you can categorise factors and work out how to reduce anxiety and friction and those you have to take action on:  

  • We Influence
  • Can Influence 
  • Want To Influence 
  • Don’t And Can’t Influence 

More Than Just Another Unactionable List

Company Factors Template

This framework works on whiteboards, spreadsheets, miro boards and notion boards, you should keep a running weekly to monthly record (often asynchronously works best) and this enables you to make smart decisions and address/readdress issues and lagging indicators more frequently rather than having to jump straight to headcount freezes and layoffs. 

Essential To Truly Know: Dashboards and your internal data often only tell you the surface-level information, the analysis section is imperative and this is where your factors come into their own. Storytelling takes you to the next level.

FYI: Executed right, these factors will appear on your transparent decision document, letting your company know you (and the leadership team have heard and acted upon ideally collaboratively) have made important decisions and then how you got there and why these factors matter, with the actions required to address said issues. 

This week consider how you add this framework and workflow into your management meetings, empower department leads and your business analysis (data insights etc) team to feed in weekly or even ad-hoc and discuss these factors regularly, 

Thanks and I’ll land back in your inbox next week

Danny Denhard 

Want someone to step up as a leader? Let them know to subscribe here 😉 

PS/ It is well worth reading how Charlie Munger refers to the forces at work and how he operates with or against them. 

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Company Culture Leadership

The Corporate Buzzword Bingo Card 2023

The-Focus-Corporate-Buzzword-Bingo-Card-2023-Edition

Each year we adopt new words, new corporate jargon and buzzwords that we end up bringing into the business, not just being used but often many internal jokes made from the words we use and the style we say them in.

The 2023 corporate jargon card includes many that will be used in the boardroom, across multiple slack and team chats and often in leadership meetings, AOP and QBR meetings.

Read more: The Corporate Buzzword Bingo Card 2023

The new words for 2023:

  • Economic headwinds
  • Low performers
  • Macroeconomics
  • Microeconomics
  • Quiet Quitting
  • Return to the office aka RTO

Have fun and remember to share in your slack or teams (copy and paste – focus.business/blog/corporate-buzzwords-2023)