Exec hires fail within 18 months 50-70% of the time, whether they're promoted from within or hired externally. That’s a staggering percentage. So what goes wrong? >> Even when an exec doesn’t work out, it’s rare that they haven’t contributed, sometimes significantly. After all, by the time you’re interviewing them, they’ve had great prior success and they’ve built incredible skills. And yet exec roles are incredibly difficult to hire for.

There may be nothing I’ve seen wreck the careers of high-performing, hardworking people more commonly than stepping into a manager role the person isn’t ready for. At the same time, great people often seek stretch roles. So how do you know if you’re ready? >> The pattern of seeking stretch roles fast happens often at startups. Your startup may or may not turn $$$, but the thing startups give you compared to BigCo is the chance to catapult your growth ahead several steps. You get to do things you're not qualified for on paper.

I don’t know very many people in tech who aren’t feeling tired right now. True at every organization and seniority level.

And yet, objectively speaking, people in tech have had it comparatively way better than most people since Mar 2020. So what’s that tiredness about? >> Let’s start with some stress factors in tech:

- Covid
- Culture tension over DEI: Progressive workers having expectations that orgs usually haven’t met
- Culture tension over WFH/in-office
- Market drop and job threat

Today would've been my grandma's birthday. She died 13 years ago, a couple of weeks before my kid was born. She was quite a lady. >> She finished at the top of her high school class, with special distinction in math and chemistry. But she wasn't allowed to go to college. That was for her brothers.

As a leader, there may be no skill more important than emotional self-regulation. I struggled with this for a lot of my career (which of course as a woman, made me extra worried about being a trope). Thread >> First, a leader’s job is to bring calmness and stability to chaotic situations. For everything you say, you have to ask: Am I making this better right now or making it worse?

I have been managing people off and on for a long time now. Here are 10 open, vulnerable, painful mistakes I’ve made. Ouch. I’m sharing them so you don’t have to make them too. Thread >> 1/ Shying away from giving difficult feedback. This is my top Grade A mistake. It’s always easier to not give tough feedback in the moment, to let the moment pass. This is a dangerous habit. The immediate issue might pass, but the broader issue recurs until it becomes unbearable.

I started my software career as PM at Microsoft. When I took the job, I expected to do it for about a year while I figured out what I wanted to do next. Here are 9 things I learned there that both surprised me and helped me in the long term. Thread >>> 1 I had never heard of PM as a job before being one. But it turns out the stuff I'd done before, the roles I’d had in school projects, in volunteer activities, etc — I was just a PM without the title. You don’t always have to be qualified on paper to be able to do a job.

1 Whether you're brand-new to management or highly experienced, here are 10 questions that you need to get great at asking, and the situations where you need to ask them. Thread >> 2 When someone is feeling overwhelmed: What 3 things must happen in the next few months for everything else to succeed?

(Help them cut / deprioritize everything that isn't those 3 things)

1 A good friend of mine got her dream job at an early stage startup last week. She called me up and said, "I'm going to take the job, but what should I ask before I do?" This is what I told her. Thread >> 2 Of course, you should ask all the obvious things you’d ask about any job: about accountabilities, culture, vision, issue price and ownership, etc. But based on what is going on in the market right now, for early-stage startups in particular, I’d ask additional questions.

1 If you’re having a tough time with a colleague — a peer, someone on your team, a manager, or anything else —try asking them for feedback. Make it safe for them to share their experience with you, and be open to what you might discover. Thread >> 2 I wrote this as my @textio kickoff note this morning; with some encouragement, I decided to share more broadly. Here we go!

Some years back, I was having a hard time with a colleague at work. In my experience, they were opinionated, stubborn, and harsh.

1 My daughters are pre-teens, two of them especially. I’m consistently amazed how many of the lessons they end up learning apply equally well to adulthood. Adolescence is such legit practice for being a grown-up. Thread >> 2 Scenario 1: “My friends are all being mean to/talking bad about [OTHER KID/TEACHER/ETC]. I don’t agree with them, but I’m afraid they’ll think I’m not cool if I say so.”

1 There is a set of management mistakes that managers make over and over again. Especially likely for newer managers, but it happens to more experienced people too. I’ve made all of these mistakes. Thread >> 2 The first overwhelming common mistake is simple: Assuming that your reports work the same way you do. You probably had their job once, or a job like theirs, and you were probably reasonably good at it.

But there’s more than one way to get work done, even in the same job.

1 I’ve sometimes felt that being a CEO is a lot like being a PM, except the product is your company. Maybe if I’d started out in engineering or sales or marketing, I’d think that being a CEO was like those things. But I was a PM.

Thread >> 2 There are a few PM 101 things that I’ve come to remember recently.

This whole thread might be another way to say, “Build on your strengths; use those to power your career growth.” We often talk about growth as unlearning one set of habits and practices while learning others.

1 Today a manager asked me how to think about assigning work equitably right now when everyone on the team is in a different place with what they can personally take on. It started me thinking. Thread >> 2 On high-performing teams during normal times, it’s common to have everyone on the team looking for growth. That means stretch assignments and challenges for everyone, and individual tolerance for working in a high state of personal ambiguity.

1 Hello other working parents, are you falling apart trying to do everything right now? Because I am falling apart trying to do everything right now. Thread >> 2 To start with, we have a co-parenting situation. We had kids in prior marriages and share caretaking of 3 kids with 2 other households on alternate weeks. I work non-stop and make bread in the 1st week, and run school and barely keep up with my job in the 2nd week.

1 Like many other teams, we often work together in person. As we do more remote work in light of #COVID19seattle, we're going to do more and more of our work in writing.

This poses a unique opportunity and challenge for building and sustaining a culture of belonging. Thread > 2 Whether you use e-mail, Slack, other tools, or some combination, a lot of collaboration that might have previously happened in person is likely to move to writing over the next few weeks.

1 A friend once told me that he liked job candidates who had been in role 3+yrs or <1yr; the first showed commitment to growth, and the second showed unwillingness to stay in a bad situation.

Unless they had too many ~1-1.5yr stints, which showed poor job selection. Thread >> 2 I’ve thought about that a lot wrt technology in 2020, since he said that about a different industry at a different time. I think the basics still hold up.

1 Proposed: In any successful team, four roles show up over and over again, no matter what the project. Every effective team includes an Inspiration, an Organizer, a Questioner, and a Peacemaker. Thread >> 2 On a given project, you may find the same person playing multiple roles, but I think it works best when the roles are played by different people. You may also find that you play different roles in different groups, but I think most people have recurring tendencies.

1 The year after I finished graduate school, I interviewed for 10 different jobs, applied for dozens more, and ended up getting one. It was a difficult time, both financially and in terms of self-esteem. That year forever changed my pov on recruiting and job-seeking. Thread >> 2 I entered college believing I was heading on to a PhD and an academic life. I graduated college heading straight into a PhD program as part of this path. I did not take a break in between, so by the time I finished my PhD, 100% of my work experience was academic.

1 The first time (years ago) I heard an engineer describe their product as “so easy even your mom can learn it,” I didn’t think much of it. In retrospect, it was my first introduction to the insidious bias that exists when it comes to age demographics. A thread >> 2 To start with, “so easy even your mom can learn it” is a 1-2 punch. It’s ageist AND sexist. The sexist part, the stereotype that women are inherently less technical than men, has been discussed in many places.

1
Person: I’m having trouble working with X. [story]
Me: Have you told X what you just shared w me?
Person: No, our 1-1s are tense. I’m afraid to share it.
Me: Where are you holding 1-1s?
Person, confused: Um, in a conference room?

A thread about tense relationships at work >> 2 A few years into my career, there was a guy I just could not work with. We were like oil and water. Many people I respected seemed to admire and value him, but I couldn’t understand why.