"The ability to rapidly learn, apply and execute is a common trait among high achievers," Jerry Bernhart summarized ina recently LinkedIn post. Amazon's Jeff Bezos has said that speed is the only sustainable competitive advantage of businesses, so why wouldn't this also be true of leaders?
If this is true, how do you demonstrate learning agility in your career? I contend that it might be best demonstrated by unconventional (and traditionally under-valued) career paths that spanned industries, roles and responsibilities, company sizes and types, locations, and different capital structures. When you see variety like this coupled with success, you see the results of learning agility.
I have wondered how my career might have progressed if I had stayed in one industry segment, one customer segment, one functional discipline, one company type (VC-baked growth companies or big enterprises), or even one city. But considering that it is impossible to A/B test, what I have concluded is that my diversity of background provides me:
- a more holistic strategic perspective to decision making and implementation,
- makes me a better business person, and
- has taught me to how to ramp up fast to make an impact.
Hopefully, it has also helped me create opportunities for others to grow as well as I strive to be a hospitable leader.
Thinking about your own career, where have you best seen your own learning agility develop?
I fundamentally believe that businesses can be a force for good in the world. The German multi-hyphenate content creator (who lived before we called coined that term), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is credited with this gem: "Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean."
With the recent SCOTUS rulings this week and legislative changes that have people in heated debates, I would love to see businesses, institutions, and other private organizations, and the leaders that run them, stepping up to be the good they want to see in the world. Not because they have to legally, but because they want to and because they can.
What if, through the dedicated effort of everyone creating space for others to do their best work, we could make our workplaces more diverse and help under-represented students achieve their dreams of a college education? What if we could give people viable economic options (like good paying jobs and new employee benefits, as a start) to help others avoid, pay down, and pay off student loans and pay it forward to other students or their families who want to follow in their path in a sustainable flywheel? What if we could encourage and support entrepreneurship to grow the pie for everyone? What if each business committed to its own employees and to its customers, whom they should know better than anyone, to do a bit better every day? Imagine what could happen if we were just naive enough to believe it could be accomplished!
Goethe is also credited with my favorite inspirational quote, which applies here as well. "Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."
3% of the CEOs in the S&P 500 are named Jennifer, according to Bloomberg as quoted in an article by Bill Hayes in Directors & Boards. The second most popular traditionally-female name was Lisa at 2% of CEOs. In 2023, there are now more women (of any name added together) running companies in the S&P 500 than men named "John."
Amazon is a very successful company and is admired throughout the world. In a few short decades, it became a top globally-recognized brand and has influenced countless other businesses to rethink their approach to innovation. Amazon Web Services (AWS) the cloud computing pioneer, is the fastest enterprise software company in the history of the world.
So, what lessons do Amazon’s Leadership Principles and daily mechanisms hold for those who are actively or passively looking for their next career move? A lot.
CUSTOMER OBSESSION: The foundational Leadership Principle at Amazon is a relentless pursuit of understanding durable customer needs and then driving solutions to address those needs. Anyone who has worked there or studied the company knows about the “flywheel” where connected customer needs (for selection, low prices, quick delivery) feed off each other to create customer loyalty. Would be job seekers should apply the same discipline to their search. Rather than applying to every role they see or trying to be “everything to everyone,” they should focus on their ideal customer profile, in this case, a hiring manager at a particular type of company that has needs they can best fill. When you read job descriptions, look for the problems they cite or imply in the description. What are they looking to accomplish? What are their barriers to success? What problem are they trying to solve with this hire?
For ideas on how to do narrowing down, I recommend professor Steve Dalton’s The 2-Hour Job Search (thank you, Gina Riley, for the original recommendation). For those who are in the thought leadership business, see David C. Baker’s The Business of Expertise (thank you, Drew Neisser for that recommendation) and The Thought Leaders Practice from Matt Church, Peter Cook, and Scott Stein (thank you, Marc Wolfe for that recommendation).
WORKING BACKWARDS: The most famous Amazon mechanism is the working backwards process. It is codified in a PRFAQ, which outlines in a fake press release format what you propose to do for that customer need you identified. You can do the same thing for your career. Sit down and write a press release announcing your appointment for your next job. As you might have been taught, start with the headline and the “customer quote” (in this case, the hiring manager’s quote) that outlines why you were such a great fit for their needs. This sounds easy but is very hard, and that is the point. It forces you to think deeply about what you bring to the table, what needs you solve, and why you are better than any alternative (including the “hire no one and try to do the work with the folks you already have” scenario, which is very common). This will give you confidence when networking, applying or interviewing for new roles as you can articulate your value proposition.
For more information on how to write out strategy in this way, see chapter 6 of my book, Well Made Decisions. I also recommend Colin Bryar and Bill Carr’s Working Backwards.
LEARN AND BE CURIOUS: If you find yourself out of work and considering the next steps, don’t forget to apply this critical leadership principle. Take the time to get a new certification, take a course, or learn a new skill. Build a website, start a blog, train for a 5k, dive deep into a technical topic, and add to your toolkit in a way that not only bolsters your resume, but gives you a sense of accomplishment. A job search, especially an active one, can drain your energy, and so many days, you can feel like you aren’t making progress. Focusing on learning daily gives you back that agency and prepares you well for what is next. When you do land your next appointment, you may find it was something that you were not qualified to do before you jumped into learning!
How else are you applying Leadership Principles to your career plan?
A recent article in Forbes by Janet Balis, who works in EY’s Marketing Practice, summarized research that EY conducted with the University of Oxford and identified that emotions are a key determining factor in the success or failure of a business transformation. She went on to say that those with a CMO background may be well-suited to the collaboration, care, inspiration, empowerment, building skills, and leadership required for high-performing transformation. In other words, it is a familiar set of decisions for those of us who work cross-functionally, create impact at scale, and constantly advocate for customers.
That said, even those wired for or experienced in change, need help along the way, especially as they work across the organization to share vision and align motivations. When I wrote Well Made Decisions, I thought about the strategic decisions that businesses make and the processes and approaches that leaders employ before and after the decision and concluded decisions weren’t a finish line, but a starting line.
With this in mind, I have begun to expand my areas of practice to a broader set of tools and principles that I have found to be particularly effective and backed by research and results in companies large and small. Over the coming weeks, I will share more of what I am helping companies, CEOs, and leaders accomplish. If I can be useful to you in the meantime, as you are considering a strategic refresh, merger or acquisition integration planning, or process reinvention, do not hesitate to reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn.
For Christmas, I received an amazing gift from my husband. It is leather-bound collection of poems from the poetess, Adelaide Anne Proctor published in 1888. The introduction to the book was penned by none other than Charles Dickens!
The volume contained poem that I have now re-read dozens of times and shared with so many already. It is entitled “Treasures.” Although the word choice is not modern, the message is timeless: blessings are not the opposite of troubles. Virtues are not gained without sacrifice. Doubt builds faith. I hope this an encouragement to you as you collect treasures in the new year!
TREASURES
Let me count my treasures
All my soul holds dear,
Given me by dark spirits
Whom I used to fear.
Through long days of anguish,
And sad nights, did Pain
Forge my shield, Endurance,
Bright and free from stain!
Doubt, in misty caverns
‘mid dark horrors sought,
Till my peerless jewel,
Faith to me she brought.
Sorrow, that I wearied
Should remain so long,
Wreathed my starry glory,
The bright Crown of Song
Strife, that racked my spirit
Without hope or rest,
Left the blooming flower,
Patience, on my breast.
Suffering, that I dreaded,
Ignorant of her charms,
Lead the fair child, Pity,
Smiling, in my arms.
So I count my treatures,
Stored in days long past —
And I thank the givers,
Whom I know at last!
Appreciated this useful personal framework from Dr. David Weiss aboutdecision making that was shared with me on LinkedIn.
I would add another dimension playing off the bottom link ("Will I do it?") and that is the plan for implementation. This step goes beyond good intentions. After all the results (not to mention most of the investments, resources, etc) of a decision happen AFTER the decision is made. This is especially true in organizations where whole teams are mobilized against strategy.
You can read more about this in my book Well Made Decisions.
Over the past few years, I have been seeing up close the intersection of athletics and business in my role as the CMO of LEARFIELD. I believe sports have many lessons to teach us about decision making that can be applied beyond the field of play. This blog series compares game day decisions and those faced by business leaders providing some insights from the greatest minds in sports that can improve your business.
One of my favorite episodes of Young Sheldon is where the genius child of a west Texas high school football coach tells his Dad matter-of-factly that according to the statistics it is better to “go for it” on a fourth down than it is to punt. It takes some convincing, but in the end the team does well with the new, unconventional strategy. The decision that coaches make on how to handle fourth downs has lessons for us about crisis management.
For those reading who might not be as familiar with American football (preferring perhaps the round ball variety played everywhere else), a 4th down is the offensive’s teams last chance to move the ball or score before they have to surrender it to the opponent and risk being scored upon. This is where strategy can fall victim to panic and impatience. The team’s back is against the proverbial wall. They still have control of the ball, but their control is tenuous and threatened.
There are many situations that put businesses into similar positions. Perhaps a company has invested extensively into new market expansion or new technology and are running out of time to have those investments pay off. Perhaps they are facing new pressures externally from the market or economy, or internally from their board of directors, which is causing them to change their style of play. Perhaps the current leadership is under performance pressure and feel like they are in a 4th down predicament.
In these situations, football has some strategy lessons for leaders under risk and scrutiny. Like Shelton Cooper demonstrated, expert advice will vary, but here are some rules of thumb and how they might apply to your team:
Field Position Matters: Most advise that teams should not punt the ball on the opponent’s side of the field, and really only after crossing your own 40-yard line. Anything less than that puts the opponent in good scoring position is there is a turn-over on downs. Similarly, if you are in a competitive environment and the risk of not progressing forward is higher than the risk of pulling back, then you should proceed. If you have spent 2 years developing a promising new pharmaceutical or technology and know that your competitors are only months behind you in their development, it might make sense to continue to launch, so that you can achieve market adoption first.
Scoring May Not Be The Immediate Goal: In football, as in business, it is a long game. Not every play results in a touchdown or field goal. Sometimes moving the chains is the goal. Some times field position dictates that the special teams should come out and try to kick a field goal, instead of trying to move the ball or score a run or pass touchdown. That only makes sense if ball would be placed confidently in the range of your kicker. In business, this is where your knowledge of the market and your knowledge of your team combine. Not every team has the same capabilities, especially true in college matchups and in your business. So, it is critical to remind yourself of yourself of your differentiating strengths and what the team can reasonably accomplish under pressure. Sometimes that means putting points on the score board. Sometimes that means living to fight another day.
A Punt Isn’t Always a Defeat: If on the 4th down there is no reasonable chance to achieve a 1st down or to score, then the team will choose to punt. The goal here is to give the ball to the opponent, but place it as far away as possible. There are many ways that business emulate this behavior. Instead of developing a marketable product, some firms will secure intellectual property so that anyone attempting to bring to market a product in the space has to license their technology. Sometimes what a company learned through a market or product development process reveals that the market need isn’t as substantial or profitable as they once thought. In this case, ceding the space to a competitor might have them chasing low-return opportunities, while you go on to solve larger or more impactful customer needs. Perhaps you believed in the strategy, but outside forces are causing you to pick different priorities. Although it is hard to stop investing in something you believed in or to pivot an organization to a new strategy, it is often best to ignore the sunk cost and move to a new strategy.
In my book, Well Made Decisions, I write about the importance remaining nimble after a high-stakes decision is made. After all, it is after the decision where all of the results occur. There no such thing as a right decision in many cases, but one that was made right (or deemed wrong) by what happened after the play was called. You see this on the field of play as well, where punts are returned for touchdowns, or the ball is recovered in other ways to change the momentum of the game. Through great communication, a grasp of the fundamentals of the business, and candid truth-telling and teamwork, great teams can perform well even when they face 4th down situations.
Over the past few years, I have been seeing up close the intersection of athletics and business in my role as the CMO of LEARFIELD. I believe sports have many lessons to teach us about decision making that can be applied beyond the field of play. This blog series compares game day decisions and those faced by business leaders providing some insights from the greatest minds in sports that can improve your business.
Baseball is a game that is highly instrumented. Everything is measured and tracked. This makes it a great source for data-driven leadership lessons. The game also has a rich tradition and lots of rules that change every season. In September, the MLB has changed the size of official bases which some speculate will make it easier for runners to steal bases. You can see the comparison of the old and new bases in the background of the graphic above.
A base is “stolen” when a runner advances to a base to which “they are not entitled” (seems a little judgy, Wikipedia) and they are deemed safe at the next base. It apparently first happened in either 1863 or 1865 with Ned Cuthbert playing for the Philadelphia Keystones.
Even if that is true, they will have some big records to beat! There is a now-retired MLB player, Rickey Henderson, who racked up an incredible 1,406 stolen bases in his career. In the 1887 season, Hugh Nicol racked up 138 stolen bases in a single season for the Cincinnati Red Stockings (AA), although it is speculated that not all of Hugh’s would meet the “modern” rules. Modern rules established (gulp!) in 1898.
Stealing bases holds some interesting lessons for business leaders interested in entering adjacent markets. If a business is well-established in a category or with a particular customer set, what can that company do to take its current product to new markets or to serve their current customers in new ways?
Know the Score: It is critical that players on the field know score, the inning, the out count, and the position of all the players on base and those on the hitting roster. Otherwise, they will not do the right thing. The same is true in business. Before considering any impactful decision, one must understand the current situation clearly, including the businesses' ability and appetite to invest.
Managing Risk-Reward: Not all stolen bases attempted are successful. There is certainly risk associated with business expansion which should be explored. In my book, Well Made Decisions, I write about the importance of customer obsession and the practice of writing out strategy to mitigate risk. One useful practice is to do a pre-mortem to identify the potential derailers to your plan, before you implement. This is what baseball coaches and players do when they are making real-time decisions on the field. Before they take their foot off the base, they are calculating probabilities. Analysis of adjacent markets often use the 2x2 matrix I illustrated with bases above. You can choose to take existing products to new customers. Or you can choose to bring new offerings to your existing markets. The further away you get from your current customers or markets or your current products or technologies, the more risk. Talking candidly about those risks and mitigating them can be the key to getting the buy-in and cooperation the business will need.
Over the past few years, I have been seeing up close the intersection of athletics and business in my role as the CMO of LEARFIELD. I believe sports have many lessons to teach us about decision making that can be applied beyond the field of play. This blog series compares game day decisions and those faced by business leaders providing some insights from the greatest minds in sports that can improve your business.
My family became fans of University of Oregon football in the heady days when Chip Kelly wore the headset and Marcus Mariota led the team from the quarterback position. Their famed hurry-up offense delivered wins, a Rose Bowl victory, and a Heisman for Mariota, not to an impressive football center on campus named in his honor. In the first video example above, there are a scant 17 seconds between the end of the first down and the beginning of the second.
For those who might not be familiar, a hurry-up offense is a style of play in American football where the team with the ball avoids or shortens their huddle in an attempt to limit or disrupt defensive strategies or flexibility. It prevents the defense from substituting players and maintains a game momentum. I understand the no-huddle offense was pioneered by the Cincinnati Bengals and was used in the 1990’s by the Buffalo Bills. The point is to use the clock to wear your opponent down and maintain control of the game play.
Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors was asked was keeps her up at night and she said “speed.”1 In her case it isn’t about the acceleration of her vehicles, although that might be an issue that some of her team work on, but rather the speed to business. Leaders from Bill Gates to Elon Musk to Sam Altman from the Y Combinator for start-ups have all spoken about the differentiation that speed is to a business.
In my book, Well Made Decisions, I have a chapter entitled “A Case for Now” where I detail the benefits and strategies around making decisions faster. In other words, how can you do it now? Here are a few useful tips if you want to accelerate your business:
1. Evaluate the kind of decision you are making. It if is reversible (borrowing language from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos who called these “two way door” decisions), then decide now. You will find that most decisions are reversible, which should empower your teams. If you know what play to run, run it.
2. Don’t wait for external deadlines. Set your own forcing mechanisms to ensure that momentum is being maintained. In football speak, you could take a huddle without penalty, but you choose an up-tempo alternative in order to gain a competitive advantage.
3. Remember, slow is expensive. Oregon’s season would have been very different if they had chosen a conventional pace. Anything that takes time or introduces ambiguity into your organization has huge implications on your productivity and efficiency. Don’t ever wait for certainty to choose clarity.
Here are five pieces of advice that I have for women succeeding in the careers of their choice, no matter who has gone before them.
Speak the Language of Business: Imagine learning to play softball. You learned to throw, catch, and run. But you never learned how to keep score. How good of player would you be? Not very good. The same is true in any pursuit and in business the score is kept in financial terms. Every aspiring leader should learn how to read and interpret financial statements. They should understand how their work impacts not only expenses, but revenue and ultimate enterprise value. They should lead with that in conversations with leadership as at some level of the organization you will no longer be reporting to a creative or technical professional, as perhaps you were early in your career. You will report to a businessperson and will need to speak their language. The more you speak it, the more you will be ready for larger influence.
Mine for Gold: You open your eyes to a dim light. You feel around your surroundings which are cold and hard to the touch. Once your eyes adjust however, you realize that you are in a mineshaft. A glint on the wall tells you that you are in a gold mine. You have the tools you need, if you choose to use them to mine for gold. A lot of professionals don’t realize that they are in a goldmine. That their employer, their colleagues, their college classmates, and even their neighbors or fellow parishioners can open doors for them and help their learn and grow. LEARFIELD is a leader in media, data, and technology in college sports and between my 2500 colleagues and our network of connections, there is probably no one in the sports landscape more than a few degrees of connection away. Not that getting to them would be easy in all cases, but the gold is there. You are the same. Even if your personal network doesn’t inherently a lot of potential for your chosen career path, you have access to reporters, industry influencers, and academics. Thanks to social media, these friends-you-have-not-yet-met have never been easier to access, especially for those who know what they want and can offer mutual value.
Be (Your Best Version of) Yourself: As Oscar Wilde apparently said “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.” I have seen of late this adage being used to describe selfish and disrespectful behavior or those who act as if the world revolves around them and everyone must change to accommodate their sensibilities. That is not what I am talking about. I think each of us should reflect deeply on who we are when we are at our best, how we want to contribute, and what we want to be known for and live into that future version of yourself. Academy Award winning actor, Matthew McConaughey, recently spoke at our company conference. He describes his hero as himself 10 years from now. I think we all have that hero and if we can pull them into focus, it helps us prioritize and make good choices today. He joked that his “tomorrow me” would appreciate if “today me” programmed the coffee machine. What else might your “tomorrow you” appreciate? Staying out of debt, maintaining a relationship, getting an education, and the like all require delayed gratification. It may require managing the expectations of your “today friends and family” to what your “future self” needs and wants. Billie Eilish’s title song on her new album speaks to this. The chorus explains how she has changed her mind about a relationship because “I’m in love with my future. Can’t wait to meet her.” I am sure that if you get your future in focus, you will feel the same.
Learn to Write: Take a business writing class. Write often. Have others critique your work. Read books and articles that in your field that give you a sense for the vocabulary and culture of your industry. Practice, practice, practice. Writing is the single-most important thing a leader should be able to do to think deeply and communicate clearly.
Marry Wisely: I know this sounds like retro advice, but I can tell you without a doubt that the most successful leaders of any gender or persuasion that I have had the pleasure to work with closely or admire from afar had spouses or partners who made sacrifices, took on disproportionate responsibilities at home, and allowed for a degree of career flexibility that made upward mobility possible. In short, they had a home community that provided them security and practical support. I am not the only one who has spoken about this. My husband, Tony, has been instrumental to my success in countless ways. I am not alone in this. Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the late Supreme Court Justice talked of the support she got (and gave) to her tax attorney husband. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, spoke of the power of having a resourceful spouse. Indra Nooyi, former PepsiCo CEO who serves on Amazon’s board, has spoken to it when she said that balancing work and family is a “constant juggling act” and it’s often “the people around us — like our life partners — who make this juggling possible.”
This article is an excerpt of an article originally in Authority Magazine written by Ming Zhao.
I was asked recently what three character traits that have contributed most to my success have been strategic thinking, a sense of urgency, and positivity.
Strategic Thinking: I can see around strategic corners and find ways to maximize or improve anything we are attempting to do. This was well illustrated recently by a rebranding exercise I led for one of our business groups. We were all in agreement that the current way we talked about and positioned the business offering was slowing down adoption, but it wasn’t clear the path forward. Through facilitated discussions, we arrived at a common view of a new for a new business name. I called it giving the business a “handle” that was easier to pick up and carry and share. This led us to a structured naming exercise that resulted in a new brand approach, well received by our stakeholders. I was able to facilitate this by asking questions and broadening the view of the group to the range of challenges we were facing and how best to optimize our outcomes.
Sense of Urgency: I am not naturally patient person, which is something I am working on. But in a business context, I think this “fire in the belly” has helped me set the pace for our teams, pushed teams to experiment more (with incomplete or imperfect information so that we can learn faster), and helped shape the industries of which I have been a part. I served for several years for the Avixa board of directors on their Leadership Search Committee. This trade and industry association, like the industry it serves, has been predominantly male for a many decades. There was a lot of energy about getting more gender, racial, and experiential diversity on the board, but the question was often one of timing. Is this the year to put forward this female candidate over her male counterpart? Together with others on the board (both women and men, I am proud to say), the sense of urgency was contagious and we started making changes. I recently saw a picture of the ribbon cutting ceremony for Avixa’s largest trade show of the year and among the board members holding big scissors were as many women as men and the pipeline for chairman of the board now include several women. Truly, this is a career highlight for me. This is how a sense of urgency can lead to long-term change.
Positivity: I am not always happy (as my teenage children will attest), but I am always hopeful. I can see the silver lining in the clouds on my best days, I can be an encouragement to others who might focus on problems so much that they can’t see possibilities. I recently was talking to someone who experienced a disappointing loss at work and after talking it through she saw it as a “making room for something better.” In business there is a lot of failure and loss. If not, you are doing it wrong and not experimenting enough or taking enough risks. How you deal with that failure and loss, personally and on teams, is critical to the resilience of the organization and how well you take care of customers over the long haul. I consider feedback a gift, even if it is hard to take, as we are all on a journey of growth.
This article is an excerpt of an article originally in Authority Magazine written by Ming Zhao.
At the NACDA Convention this year, I had a chance to sit down with Steph Garcia Cichosz, who herself with a D1 athlete and Olympic hopeful, with Collegiate Sports Connect, to talk about female fans, women’s college sports, and the world of opportunity ahead.
I am thrilled to announce that Hashtag Sports has selected their Creators of Color cohort for 2022. I had the honor of serving as a judge, looking at all the impressive applications and providing feedback. I do not envy the tough decisions that the organizers had to make to take all the feedback and make the final selections, as every application I looked at was very strong.
Checkout this year’s cohort at https://creators.hashtagsports.com/cohort-2022.
The past 48 hours have been a big one for me. I had an op-ed piece on the anniversary of Title IX featured in AdAge, I was quoted in an Adweek article, I was a featured executive on Titan 100 (after being honored earlier this spring in their inaugural Georgia awards program), and a CMO Spotlight podcast also dropped.
It is such an honor to be able to advocate for topics like equity in sports, career development, and decision making and to be able to draw attention to the amazing work of my colleagues at LEARFIELD. I am hoping that these pieces are useful to the readers and listeners and help inform their own plans!
I had a chance to chat with Daniel Burstein at MarketingSherpa about LEARFIELD’s rebrand. It was a chance to dig into the details and share insights for other marketers who might be considering a change to their enterprise brand or identity.
It was a pleasure to chat with Peter Mahoney and Kelsey Krapf from The Next CMO Podcast about college sports marketing. Check it out on all the streaming platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, etc.
It was my honor to chat with Alan B. Hart for the Marketing Today podcast. Check out our full interview.
It was my pleasure to send time with Jim Stengel on The CMO Podcast. We talked about about career journeys, how to make great decisions, and about college sports marketing. Check out the episode on Apple iTunes or Spotify.
In my recent interview with Thrive Global, I was able to share some career advice that I have found useful. This included the advice to not wait for permission to get the experience that you want for your own development and that of your career.