How To Manage Up

I do get asked this question -- "How do I manage up?" or "How do I get the attention of senior management?" -- a lot, so I wanted to address it a bit in my newsletter.

The first and most important thing to remember is that while CEOs get a lot of flak for the pay ratio and perceptions of their life as lavish, CEOs and other C-Suiters are under a lot of pressure both internally and from investors. I hate to say this, because it can sound cringe, but CEOs are people too. Between working at 甲骨文 and CULTURE PARTNERS , I've been "in the room" with 300+ C-Suite leaders, if not more than that. Almost all of them want to do the right thing, but their incentive structure and their particular pressures at a given time pull them in a specific direction. Sometimes it's good; sometimes it's bad.

Within that paragraph is the main key: every C-Suite leader has problems they need to solve, and what unfortunately happens in many organizations is that people down the chain bring them more problems, instead of bringing them solutions. The easiest way to stand out to a senior leader is to help solve the stuff on their plate. If you can do that five out of 10 times, they will notice you and you'll be on the path to advancement.

Many cultures were built over time on fear and scarcity. In those cultures, people are afraid to act without the explicit permission of a senior leader, so they send senior leaders these constant messages about low-level priorities, just because they're terrified of doing something wrong. In essence, the employees cannot work with autonomy -- but at the same time, the senior leaders are now burnt out because every little thing is running through their inbox. They can't be strategic because they're always in the weeds and fires.

Some executives like this because it's a sense of greater control.

Most, however, hate it -- and they want people to work with autonomy and pace.

Those would be my 1-2 recommendations, then:

1. Solve problems instead of adding to problems.
2. Work with pace.

It varies by organization and senior leader, of course. Some do love control. In those situations, I would be as heads-down as possible and hit all my deadlines and tasks and not offer opinions until asked. But if you have a self-aware senior leader who just wants to make their organization better and more profitable and help the world in some way in the process, then I'd go with "solve problems" and "work with pace."

There are obviously other elements here, and they vary drastically by gender. I would no doubt show up professionally all the time. There are shifting definitions of what "professional" means, in that the richest guys in the world wear jeans and sweatshirts to work, but it means a mix of dress and respect. I would learn the business as best as you can. That means understanding the acronyms that executives use, and understanding the metrics of most importance to them. It means speaking the language.

Actually, Culture Partners has a simulation we offer called Zodiak. It's basically a game (it's bigger than just a game, but that's a good definition people can embrace) that teaches employees and middle managers more financial acumen. We've deployed it at dozens of companies, and executives always report that their front-line managers better understand the core business after participating.

If you'd be interested in Zodiak, message me and I can set you up with someone.

Those are the biggest ways to show up and manage up, though. What else have you seen that works well?

Elsewhere This Week

This article from Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management once again makes the case for small teams over big teams. I like small teams myself, and when our clients ask us about team formation, we try to encourage them to keep teams smaller:

Let's get rid of meetings. I have a longer article on this coming out, but basically, eliminate the pointless recurring meetings in your organization and you'll free up so much iteration time:

Is #loneliness an epidemic, or the logical conclusion of the modern economy? --- >

From Harvard Business Review : what to do when your team's vibe is off.

From Yale School of Management : what are the five schools of thought dominating the discussion about AI right now?

From me (hey!): if you want to build a good #culture, respect your people's lives outside of work.

From Worklife : Gen Z thinks staying at work until 5:01pm is "performative."

On that one: this goes to the "managing up" part above. Some bosses love the people who stay until 7pm. Is it performance, a little bit? Yes. But if you can stay until 7pm, and it could benefit your career, it's worth it periodically.

From Stanford University Graduate School of Business : can we tie CEO comp to ESG goals?

We can, and over time we will need to more and more, but right now it's so ideological that it would be really hard.

What else do you want us to cover next week?