Leadership

Over the course of my career, I’ve learned to be okay with getting things wrong.       Not because it feels good (it doesn’t), but because every mistake creates an opportunity to learn and grow. And because it means someone trusted me enough to tell me when I missed the mark. That kind of honesty feels increasingly rare—especially in a world where AI is telling people exactly what they want to hear and where people increasingly gravitate toward information that confirms their beliefs.      That’s why I think one of the most valuable skills you can cultivate is this: Find people who will give you tough feedback.      Across my time at Microsoft, the Gates Foundation, and Pivotal, the moments that shaped me the most weren’t the wins. They were the times when someone I trusted pulled me aside and gave me feedback I needed to hear. These conversations helped me see what I’d missed and rethink how I was showing up, which made me a better leader. But they only happened because the people around me knew they could be honest, and in fact, I expected them to be. You can’t grow—or help your teams grow—if you act like you’re the only one with all the answers.      I’ve seen this in every place I’ve worked. The leaders who made the biggest impact weren’t the ones who got it right all the time. They were the ones who created the conditions for honesty. Their teams felt free to surface new ideas, ask tough questions, and admit their mistakes. And those leaders were humble enough to hear feedback about themselves—and then take the steps to do things differently.       My advice on how to build this skill? Seek out colleagues and mentors you can trust to give you honest feedback. Ask for it often. Be vulnerable—not defensive—and take the opportunity to understand what you didn’t see before. It will transform the way you learn, lead, and build teams that thrive. #SkillsontheRise 

Testing out the new Claude Cowork. I asked it to go through every Lenny's Podcast episode and pull out the 10 most important themes and lessons for product builders. Then, the 10 most counterintuitive truths. I gave it access to a folder with 320 transcripts. First, it said "This is a substantial task - 320 podcast transcripts to analyze!" 15 minutes later... The 10 most important themes from Lenny's Podcast 1. Activation Is Everything — Slack's "2,000 messages" moment, Gamma's 30-second magic. Get users to value fast. 2. Storytelling as a Superpower — Compelling narratives align organizations better than documents. 3. Positioning Is Strategy, Not Marketing — April Dunford's 5-step framework that starts with competitive alternatives, not messaging. 4. Product Discovery Before Delivery — Teresa Torres' Opportunity Solution Trees and Marty Cagan's Four Risks framework. Talk to customers weekly, not quarterly. 5. Ruthless Prioritization — Shreyas Doshi's LNO Framework (Leverage/Neutral/Overhead) and focusing on opportunity cost over ROI. 6. AI is Transforming Product Development — Model maximalism, evals as core PM skill, CEOs becoming ICs again. 7. Empowered Teams vs. Feature Factories — Marty Cagan's distinction: give teams problems to solve, not features to build. 8. Build Your Operating System — Claire Hughes Johnson's framework for founding documents, operating cadence, and decision frameworks. 9. Pre-Mortems and Risk Anticipation — Shreyas Doshi's technique to surface failure modes before they happen. 10. Small Teams, Outsized Impact — Jason Fried's 2-person/6-week constraints, Shopify's pair programming culture. The 10 most counterintuitive truths: 1. Fear Gives Bad Advice—Do the Opposite — Whatever you're afraid to do (hard conversation, telling the board bad news) is exactly what you should do. 2. Adding Friction Can INCREASE Conversion — Adding personalization questions to signup improved Amplitude's conversion by 5%. 3. Fewer Features = More Value — The Walkman succeeded because Sony REMOVED recording. QuickBooks wins with half the features at double the price. 4. Adding People Makes You Slower (Absolutely) — Companies produce MORE total output after layoffs. Coordination overhead is the silent killer. 5. What Customers Say They Want Is Meaningless — 93% said they wanted energy-efficient homes. Nobody bought them. "Bitchin' ain't switchin'." 6. Goals Are Not Strategy—They're the Opposite — Richard Rumelt says confusing goals for strategy is the most common strategic error. OKRs are often just wish lists. 7. Don't A/B Test Your Big Bets — Instagram and Airbnb actively reject testing for transformational changes. You can't A/B test your way to greatness. 8. Your Gut IS Data — Intuition is compressed experiential learning that isn't statistically significant yet. Don't discount it. 9. Most PMs Are Overpaid and Unnecessary — Marty Cagan himself says feature teams don't need PMs. Nikita Bier calls PM "not real."

This week at Fortune Brainstorm Tech, I sat down with leaders actually responsible for implementing AI at scale - Deloitte, Blackstone, Amex, Nike, Salesforce, and more. The headlines on AI adoption are usually surveys or arm-wavy anecdotes. The reality is far messier, far more technical, and - if you dig into details - full of patterns worth stealing. A few that stood out: (1) Problem > Platform AI adoption stalls when it’s framed as “we need more AI.” It works when scoped to a bounded business problem with measurable P&L impact. Deloitte's CTO admitted their first wave fizzled until they reframed around ROI-tied use cases. ➡️ Anchor every AI proposal in the metric you’ll move - not the model you’ll use. (2) Fix the Plumbing Every failed rollout traced back to weak foundations. American Express launched a knowledge assistant that collapsed under messy data - forcing a rebuild of their data layer. Painful, but it created cover to invest in infrastructure that lacked a flashy ROI. Today, thousands of travel counselors across 19 markets use AI daily - possible only because of that reset. ➡️ Treat data foundations as first-class citizens. If you’re still deferring middleware spend, AI will expose that gap brutally. (3) Centralize Governance, Decentralize Application Nike’s journey is a case study: Phase 1: centralized team → clean infra, no traction. Phase 2: federated into business-line teams → every project tied to outcomes → traction unlocked. The pattern is consistent: centralize standards, infra, and security; decentralize use-case development. If you only push from the top, you have a fast start but shallow impact. Only bottom-up ownership gives depth. ➡️ You can’t scale AI from a lab. It has to live where the business pain lives. (4) Humans are harder than the Tech Leaders agreed: the “AI story” is really a people story. Fear of job loss slows adoption. ➡️ Frame AI as augmentation, not replacement. Culture change is the real rollout plan. (5) Board Buy-In: Blessing and Burden Boards are terrified of being left behind. Upside: funding and prioritization. Downside: unrealistic timelines and a “go faster” drumbeat. Leaders who navigated best used board energy to unlock investment in cross-functional data/security initiatives. ➡️ Harness board FOMO as cover to fund the unsexy essentials. Don’t let it push you into AI theater. (6) Success ≠ Moonshot, Failure ≠ Fatal. - Blackstone's biggest win: micro-apps that save investors 1–2 hours/day. Not glamorous, but high ROI. - Nike's biggest miss: an immersive AI Olympic shoe designer - fun demo, no scale. Incremental productivity gains compound. Moonshots inspire headlines, but rarely deliver durable value. ➡️ Bank small wins. They build credibility and capacity for bigger bets. In enterprise AI, the model is the easy part. The hard part - and the difference between demo and value - is framing the right problem, building the data plumbing, designing the org, and bringing people along.

I was shadowing a coaching client in her leadership meeting when I watched this brilliant woman apologize six times in 30 minutes. 1. “Sorry, this might be off-topic, but..." 2. “I'm could be wrong, but what if we..." 3. “Sorry again, I know we're running short on time..." 4. “I don't want to step on anyone's toes, but..." 5. “This is just my opinion, but..." 6. “Sorry if I'm being too pushy..." Her ideas? They were game-changing. Every single one. Here's what I've learned after decades of coaching women leaders: Women are masterful at reading the room and keeping everyone comfortable. It's a superpower. But when we consistently prioritize others' comfort over our own voice, we rob ourselves, and our teams, of our full contribution. The alternative isn't to become aggressive or dismissive. It's to practice “gracious assertion": • Replace "Sorry to interrupt" with "I'd like to add to that" • Replace "This might be stupid, but..." with "Here's another perspective" • Replace "I hope this makes sense" with "Let me know what questions you have" • Replace "I don't want to step on toes" with "I have a different approach" • Replace "This is just my opinion" with "Based on my experience" • Replace "Sorry if I'm being pushy" with "I feel strongly about this because" But how do you know if you're hitting the right note? Ask yourself these three questions: • Am I stating my needs clearly while respecting others' perspectives? (Assertive) • Am I dismissing others' input or bulldozing through objections? (Aggressive) • Am I hinting at what I want instead of directly asking for it? (Passive-aggressive) You can be considerate AND confident. You can make space for others AND take up space yourself. Your comfort matters too. Your voice matters too. Your ideas matter too. And most importantly, YOU matter. @she.shines.inc #Womenleaders #Confidence #selfadvocacy

Stress isn’t always about the thing itself. It’s about our relationship to it. Two leaders can face the exact same challenge — a missed deadline, a difficult board meeting, a team conflict — yet their experience of stress is entirely different. Why? Stress often has less to do with the external event and more to do with the lens through which we view it. 👉 When we label something as unbearable, it grows heavier. 👉 When we approach it as a problem to be solved, it becomes manageable. 👉 When we see it as an opportunity to grow, it can even become empowering. This distinction matters because leaders carry tremendous weight. If everything feels like a “threat,” stress compounds. But if we learn to reframe — to shift our relationship to the pressure — we not only reduce stress, we increase our capacity to lead with clarity and resilience. As an executive coach, I work with clients on this every day. Here are a few practices that make a difference: ✅ Name it clearly. → Is it the situation itself that’s stressful, or the meaning you’ve attached to it? Naming the difference is the first step in reframing. ✅ Shift the narrative. → Instead of asking “Why is this happening to me?”, try “What is this asking of me as a leader?” ✅ Control the controllable. → Stress escalates when we fixate on what’s outside our power. Refocus on the small actions you can take. ✅ Build in recovery. → Even the strongest leaders need rituals that restore — whether that’s exercise, mindfulness, or simply 10 minutes of stillness. The goal isn’t to eliminate stress. The goal is to reshape our relationship to it so it serves us, rather than overwhelms us. Coaching can help; let's chat. Book Your Coaching Discovery Call Today  ↳ https://lnkd.in/eKi5cCce Enjoy this? ♻️ Repost it to your network and follow Joshua Miller for more tips on coaching, leadership, career + mindset. #executivecoaching #leadership #mentalhealth #coachingtips #wellness

Your success as a leader comes down to how well you set others up to succeed. And I’ve gotten this wrong more than once. When onboarding new leaders, I would give them a stack of docs, send them on a listening tour, and check in often. I assumed that was enough. It wasn’t. I gave them information—but not context. And context is what actually drives clarity, confidence, and results. I’ve since rethought my entire approach to onboarding leaders. This year, when two fantastic leaders joined our team, I did something different: spent a week on providing context. No shortcuts. We talked through: Our mission, strategy, and priorities What success looks like in their first 90 days, 6 months, and year What’s worked—and what hasn’t—in these roles before How we’ll share feedback and stay in sync The shift? Less “onboarding” as a task. More “transferring judgment.” We left with shared context. And here’s what’s interesting: the same thing applies when onboarding AI agents. You can’t just dump data into a system and hope it performs. AI needs context too—about your customers, your voice, your goals, and what “good” looks like. Whether you’re onboarding a new employee or a new AI teammate, the principle is the same: Context isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between getting started and getting results.

Over the last year, nearly every FMCG executive I’ve spoken to whether sitting in Chicago, Paris, or São Paulo has echoed the same challenge: “We need to get closer to the consumer, faster.” Global brand, local nuance the future of FMCG growth depends on how well your leadership understands the street, not just the spreadsheet. It’s no longer enough to run a global playbook and hope for local resonance. Why? Because the center of gravity in FMCG has shifted. 84% of FMCG companies are now increasing local decision autonomy in key growth markets. (Bain FMCG Operating Model Report, 2023) → That means your CMO can’t be the only one with a finger on the pulse. → Your regional GM can’t just execute HQ strategy. → And your global leaders can’t lead with assumptions they need cultural fluency and operational humility. In other words: local-for-local is not just a supply chain shift. It’s a leadership shift. The most successful candidates weren’t those who had rotated through five global hubs. They were the ones who could… → Read the cultural nuances of consumer behavior in that specific region → Navigate the regulatory quirks that could derail a product launch → Influence global teams while building trust with local retailers → Speak the language literally and commercially They understood the street not just the spreadsheet. And they had the rare ability to connect what’s happening on the ground with what needs to be shifted at the center. These are the leaders FMCG needs now. → Strategists who don’t just adapt to the market, they anticipate it. → Operators who don’t wait for HQ they build and test in-market. → Connectors who know when to push back and when to align. Because in today’s world, speed and relevance win. And that doesn’t come from waiting for global sign-off. It comes from empowering the right local leaders. Here’s where I see many companies trip up: They treat “local” as junior. As operational. As reactive. The truth? Your next competitive edge may be a GM in Manila, a Marketing Director in Lagos, or a Commercial Lead in Warsaw who’s trusted enough to build strategy from the ground up. That’s what global FMCG companies are starting to understand and what we’re helping them solve for in every executive search we run. Not just global leaders who can work across regions…but local leaders who can lead across functions, cultures, and expectations while driving growth with urgency and empathy. This is the new face of global FMCG. Not centralized, but coordinated. Not rigid, but responsive. Not top-down, but built from the middle out. #ExecutiveSearch #FMCGLeadership #GlobalGrowth #ConsumerGoods #TalentStrategy #LeadershipHiring

🥊 “Jingjin, have you ever considered that women are just inferior to men?” That was her opening line. The lady who challenged me was not a traditionalist in pearls. She was one of the top investment bankers of her time, closed billion-dollar deals, led global teams, the kind of woman whose voice dropped ten degrees when money was on the line. And she meant it. “Back in my day, if I had to hire, I’d always go for the man. No pregnancy leave. No PMS. No emotional volatility. Just less… liability.” And she doesn’t believe in what I do. Helping women lead from a place of wholeness. Because to her, wholeness is a luxury. Winning requires neutrality. And neutrality means: be less female and suck it up! I’ve heard versions of this many times, and too often, from high-performing women who "made it" by suppressing. But facts are: 🧠 There are no consistent brain differences between men and women that explain men’s “logic” or women’s “emotions.” 💥 Hormones impact everyone. Men’s testosterone drops when they nurture. Women’s cortisol rises in toxic workplaces, not because they’re weak, but because they’re sane. 📉 What we call “meritocracy” is often a reward system for those who can perform like they have no body, no children, no cycles. None of those are biologically male traits. They’re artifacts of a system built around male lives. So, if you're a woman who's bought into this logic, here are some counter-strategies: 🛠 1. Study Systems Like You Studied Deals Dissect the incentives, norms, and bias loops of your workplace the same way you’d break down a P&L. Don’t internalize what’s structural. 🧭 2. Redefine Strategic Strengths Stop mirroring alpha aggression to prove you belong. Deep listening, self-regulation, and nuance reading, these are leadership assets, not soft skills. Use them ruthlessly. 💬 3. Name It, Don’t Numb It If your hormones impact you one day a month, say so, but also say what it doesn’t mean: It doesn’t cancel out 29 days of clarity, strategy, and execution. 🪩 4. Build Your Own Meritocracy Start investing in spaces, networks, and cultures where your wholeness isn’t penalized. If none exist, build them. 🧱 5. Deconstruct Before You Self-Doubt When you catch yourself thinking “maybe I’m not built for this,” pause. Ask: Whose rules am I trying to win by? Who benefits when I question myself? This post isn’t about defending women. We don’t need defending. It’s about calling out the internalised metrics we still use to measure ourselves. 👊 And choosing to rewrite them. What’s the most 'rational' reason you’ve heard for why women are a liability?

90% of CEOs feel like they're barely keeping up. I've been there. You're not alone. After coaching hundreds of SMB founders, I created this checklist to bring clarity to the chaos. Here's what separates CEOs who thrive from those just trying to survive: 1. STRATEGIC DIRECTION ↳ Your North Star guides every decision. ↳ Review assumptions quarterly. Pivots save companies. ↳ Progress beats perfection. Ship, learn, iterate. 2. REVENUE ENGINE ↳ Know your ideal customer's biggest pain point. ↳ Healthy pipeline = peaceful sleep at night. ↳ Track leading indicators, not just closed deals. 3. TEAM & CULTURE ↳ Great culture attracts great people naturally. ↳ Your team wants meaning, not just money. ↳ Celebrate wins publicly. Coach privately. 4. SCALABLE OPERATIONS ↳ Start documenting before you feel ready. ↳ Every fire you fight twice needs a system. ↳ Delegate outcomes, not just tasks. 5. CASH & CAPITAL ↳ Cash runway = peace of mind. ↳ Know your burn rate like your birthday. ↳ Multiple funding options reduce desperation. 6. CUSTOMERS & RETENTION ↳ Your best insights come from customer conversations. ↳ Happy customers are your real sales team. ↳ Churn signals need immediate attention. 7. TECHNOLOGY & DATA ↳ Simple dashboards beat complex reports. ↳ Automate repetitive work. Focus on strategy. ↳ Data removes guesswork from decisions. 8. RISK & COMPLIANCE ↳ Protection today prevents disasters tomorrow. ↳ Good lawyers save more than they cost. ↳ Insurance helps you sleep better. 9. BRAND & MARKET PRESENCE ↳ Consistency beats creativity every time. ↳ Your customers should recognize you instantly. ↳ Thought leadership opens unexpected doors. 10. LEADERSHIP & SELF-MASTERY ↳ You can't pour from an empty cup. ↳ Morning routines compound into success. ↳ Your growth limits your company's growth. 11. BOARD & ADVISORS ↳ Wise advisors shorten your learning curve. ↳ Different perspectives prevent blind spots. ↳ Use their experience. That's why they're there. 12. EXIT & LONG-TERM OPTIONS ↳ Build a business that works without you. ↳ Know your options, even if you love what you do. ↳ Flexibility reduces pressure and stress. 🔖 Save this. Reference it monthly. ♻️ Share it. Help a CEO in your network. Being CEO is the hardest job in business. But you don't have to figure it out alone. P.S. Which of the 12 areas deserves more attention? Share your view in the comments. Want a PDF of the CEO Checklist? Get it free: https://lnkd.in/g3PRw5ir And follow Eric Partaker for more CEO insights. ————— 📢 Ready to become a world-class CEO? My next cohort of the CEO Accelerator kicks off next month. Sign up now and save with a special Earlybird offer: https://lnkd.in/g8_T2Kpr 20+ Founders & CEOs have already enrolled. Make 2025 your breakthrough year.

IndiGo (InterGlobe Aviation Ltd) CRISIS WASN’T IN THE SKIES. IT WAS IN THE LEADERSHIP CABIN. Three things stood out. One: Employees were left alone to face furious customers. No leader should ever let that happen. If you don’t stand by your people in a storm, don’t expect them to stand by your customers in the sun. Customer experience collapses the moment employees feel abandoned. Two: In any crisis, honesty is the only strategy that works. This time, the communication wasn’t transparent. When leaders hide the full picture, years of goodwill can disappear overnight. A crisis can earn trust, but only if you tell the truth. Three: The belief that “we are too big to be ignored” has ended more companies than competition ever has. Customers always have a choice. And if they don’t, they will create one. We shouldn’t watch the Indigo crisis like spectators. This is a reminder for every leader to build their own crisis blueprint. Because crises will come, when they do, your response becomes your reputation. There is more to business than profits. There are people, trust, and how you show up when it matters most.