In the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time obsessing over the difference between a manager and an executive. I had the fantastic opportunity to have an executive coach to guide me through this and force me to take development seriously. Additionally, over the last few years, we’ve gone from startup mode to full-blown public company through acquisition, so we also hired some seasoned executives, whom I could observe and learn from in an up-close way. These takeaways are by no means exhaustive or complete, but looking back, these are some of my key findings while on this journey. I fully expect to look back on these insights in 10 years and laugh at my naivety, but here are my takeaways as someone in their first few years of “true” executive leadership. For clarity’s sake, I consider my transition from management to executive leadership to have been when I successfully structured my departments to have managers, senior managers, or directors running them, who then report to me. This freed up my time significantly so that I could shift focus away from the day-to-day operations. So here goes:
Executive Coaches are game changers – I want to hire a coach for everything after this experience. I’d link to my specific coach, but they are not taking on new clients in this capacity. The process involved the coach flying in, doing in-person 360-degree interviews with my co-workers, and then meeting with me to identify where I was falling short. Then, we designed a plan to address these issues and worked through them week by week.
One of the findings, for example, was that I often appeared to “shoot from the hip.” Even if I had given a situation considerable consideration, I was not giving the impression that I had, as I would casually propose a solution without walking someone through the steps I went through to come to that conclusion. This was eye-opening for me, so I spent months refining my presentation techniques and also trying to develop the discipline to not just speak off the cuff. I literally had a clicker in my pocket that I would click every time I was about to chime in but was able to prevent myself from doing so in order to prepare a response thoroughly. These are all techniques my coach guided me on, and then I’d need to report back each week, so I had accountability in place.
That is just one of many examples of how a coach benefitted me, but I learned that a coach is an excellent way for me to learn & advance.
Managers run the day-to-day; executives drive improvements – It was only in 2023 that I was able to have a complete management team under me. Prior to that, there were always random people who didn’t fit elsewhere or had no need for a designated manager who would report to me. I would also just become the catch-all at times. At the beginning of 2023, for example, I had 17 direct reports! By the end of that year, I was down to 6. I’ll be honest, it was scary making that jump. I felt I was risking my job if I wasn’t personally involved in making the trains run on time, so entrusting my managers to take the reigns was nerve-wracking for me. The impact, though, was immediate after this massive re-org. I can now focus on specific projects to drive the business forward without being constantly interrupted by day-to-day issues that managers can easily handle. Of course, I’m still heavily involved and needed for certain day-to-day things, but the 80/20 distribution has flipped. I’m actually much busier now than when I had 17 reports and was directly responsible for many processes within the business, but the things I’m working on now have an outsized impact on the organization and are far more fulfilling. It required overcoming a mental hurdle to make this leap, but it continues to pay off big time.
Intense Focus on the Right Thing at the Right Time – One thing I learned in the last few years from the executives that were brought in and plopped on top of existing departments, which already ran without their heavy involvement, was that they then had the benefit to divert their focus and efforts to particular elements of that department. These are things for which the existing team would have never been willing to make the time since they were so busy in the day-to-day. Initially, I was sort of shocked to see some of these high-priced executives spend so much time on things that could be considered low priority, but of course, the thing I was missing is that they could divert a significant amount of attention to an issue for a very short period of time, and it would be resolved/improved from that point on. Then, they could move to the next thing and continue to push for improvements across whatever they encounter. I didn’t have the benefit of being dropped on top of an existing department, but I’ve now been able to claw myself out of my own and do the same. An intense focus on a few things is the most effective way to drive lasting improvement.
I have many more takeaways, so stay tuned for my next post!
