The transition from Founder to CEO is a special case of the move from “getting shit done any way any how” to leading people successfully.

I will be talking about the issues I have seen in coaching Founders (and working with Founders as an exec before that), and what works in navigating the transition successfully. Useful for Founders, CEOs and execs that work for them.

All welcome!

From Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, a helpful reminder that standing up once in front of a group, and listing what you want done is not going to cut it. Repetition, compression, story-telling, adjusting to the audience - the larger the change you want, and the larger the audience, the more you will need these tools.

“seniority denotes having the knowledge, the skills, and the nerve to push for conditions in which the team can execute well” - which means being able to say “No”. A typically clear and robust post from Chelsea Troy.

Ah, Sales and Engineering, Engineering and Sales. One of the eternal tribal rivalries, sometimes merely simmering, sometimes blowing up into outright war. A nice post looking back, considering the respective values of the two tribes and how, in the end, they both want the same thing.

A nice, simple model for giving feedback clearly and effectively. Very similar to “Situation, Behavior, Impact” we use in Radical Candor workshops (and I would say equally useful), nicely explained, and comes with a worksheet. Nifty!

Basically: hire for people who will learn fast, not for experience. If you’re in any kind of fast-growth tech company, you want people who will learn with you, grow with you and very quickly be able to master jobs quite different, and often larger, than the one you hired them for.

Nice description of the “management bump” that happens around fifty people or so (and continues to happen at various stages - that first one is often the hardest, though).

I’ve been spending a little time browsing very early blog posts from Eric Reis as he was forming his thoughts Lean Startups. This is a pretty nice breakdown of some of the possible roles of a CTO. If you are in the midst of working this out, or will be at some point, this is helpful.

No idea if this is real, but it feels real: an ex-Tesla software engineer dumps the goods on what actually goes on inside those gorgeous machines. It’s software, so it ain’t pretty. Answers such burning questions as: “why do the cars run on a cluster of ubuntu vms?” Browse it, whilst cringing.

“How do you effectively govern a country that’s home to one in five people on the planet, with an increasingly complex economy and society, if you don’t allow public debate, civil activism, and electoral feedback?” Using data, apparently. Brave new world.

Fake video clips made with AI are getting very, very good. Scary stuff.

This is at the heart of effective time management: we like urgency, we dig it, so we’ll choose a task that feels like it has to be done now, even if it “pays” less than one we that is less “urgent”. Some good examples of research backing this up.

My rather lovely ebook and mini-course on time management (including how to deal with urgency bias) is here. Take a look.

A longish and helpful introduction to cognitive bias - if you haven’t dug in before, this is a good place to start. Why do we do “irrational” things? Take a look.

Never heard the phrase “Yak Shaving” before? Me neither, and it’s a beauty. If you’ve read “When You Give a Mouse a Cookie” to your kid, you know the basic idea. If not, read on. A great name for a common time-waster.

Really terrific post by Chelsea Troy breaking down strong emotion in the workplace. Among many other statements that had me nodding my head:

“Office culture tries to mute emotion; we have this idea that expressing emotion is ‘unprofessional.’ That vehemently anti-confrontational sensibility ends up severely limiting our ability to express urgency or amplify our adamance about something in the workplace”

A good rebuttal to the “but Steve Jobs was unpleasant, so…” argument justifying bad behavior. Always worth reminding ourselves.

Has a bit of fluff about EQ at the beginning, but gets into some very simple, helpful recommendations. Easy read. Very practical.

Nice article. Having the flexibility to say “I don’t know” is so critical to any management role - in this case PMs, but I’d say anybody who has to make decisions.

Good breakdown. Pretty simple, but if you’re in the middle of a roadmap exercise (you know who you are!), a helpful read.

Throwing this one in because I just, well, found it strange. I’m all for growth, but this seems joyless. Take a look, let me know.

“Going for a workout? That’s work. Going for a bike ride? That’s work. Coffee with someone? That’s work. Reading a book? That’s work. Dinner with someone I haven’t met? Most of the time that’s work too.

I don’t artificially divide my time between work and non-work. We have one life”