Well, not everything yet, but that day is getting closer.

Jack, my VP Finance and an avid blog reader (but not yet publisher) pointed me to Beyond Bullets, a relatively new blog about Powerpoint written by Cliff Atkinson, described in his bio as “a leading authority on Powerpoint and organizational communications.” Who knew such an expert existed?

The blog is pretty good and worth reading for people who regularly design and give stand-up presentations and are tired of the same old, same old Powerpoint templates. I read through most of the postings so far, and while some are a little esoteric, many of the tips are great. Most are either about the actual software and things you can do with it or presentation design and organization. I’ve always thought I was good at Powerpoint, but I don’t hold a candle to Cliff.

After reading Brad’s post this morning on The Torturous World of Powerpoint, I can’t help but wonder if he’d be less tortured if more people knew how to design and give good presentations.

We’ve been in business at Return Path for almost 18 years now.  We’ve seen a number of competitors come and go across a bunch of different related businesses that we’ve been in.  One of the things I’ve noticed and never quite understood is that many of our competitors expend a lot of time and energy publicly trash talking us in the market.  Sometimes this takes the form of calling us or our products out by name in a presentation at a conference; other times it takes the form of a blog post; other times it’s just in sales calls.  It’s weird.  You don’t see that all that often in other industries, even when people take aim at market leaders.

During the normal course of business, one of sales reps might engage in selling against specific competitors — often times, they have to when asked specific questions by specific prospects — but one thing you’ll never see us do is publicly trash talk a single competitor by name as a company.  I’m sure there are a couple people at Return Path who would like us to have “sharper elbows” when it comes to this, but it’s just not who we are.  Our culture is definitely one that values kindness and a softer approach.  But good business sense also tells me that it’s just not smart for four reasons:

• We’re very focused and disciplined in our outbound communications — and there’s only so much air time you get as a company in your industry, even among your customers — on thought leadership, on showcasing the value of our data and our solutions, and on doing anything we can do to make our customers more successful.  Pieces like my colleague Dennis Dayman’s recent blog post on the evolution of the data-driven economy, or my colleague Guy Hanson’s amazingly accurate prediction of the UK’s “unpredictable” election results both represent the kind of writing that we think is productive to promote our company
• We’re fiercely protective of our brand (both our employer brand and our market-facing brand), and we’ve built a brand based on trust, reputation, longevity, and being helpful, in a business that depends on reputation and trust as its lifeblood — as I think about all the data we handle for clients and strategic partners, and all the trust mailbox providers place in us around our Certification program.  Clients and partners will only place trust in — and will ultimately only associate themselves with — good people.  To quote my long time friend and Board member Fred Wilson (who himself is quoting a long time friend and former colleague Bliss McCrum), if you lie down with dogs, you come up with fleas.  If we suddenly turned into the kind of company that talked trash about competition, I bet we’d find that we had diminished our brand and our reputation among the people who matter most to us.  Our simple messaging and positioning showcases our people, our expertise, and our detailed knowledge of how email marketing works, with a collective 2,000 years of industry experience across our team
• Trash talking your competition can unwittingly expose your own weaknesses.  Think about Donald Trump’s memorable line from one of the debates against Hillary Clinton – “I’m not the puppet, you’re the puppet” – when talking about Russia.  That hasn’t turned out so well for him.  It’s actually a routine tactic of Trump, beyond that one example.  Accuse someone else of something to focus attention away from your own issues or weaknesses.  Don’t like the fact that your inauguration crowd was demonstrably smaller than your predecessor’s?  Just lie about it, and accuse the media of creating Fake News while you’re at it.  Disappointed that you lost the popular vote?  Accuse the other side of harvesting millions of illegal votes, even though it doesn’t matter since you won the electoral college!  Think about all these examples, regardless of your politics.  All of them draw attention to Trump’s weaknesses, even as he’s lashing out at others (and even if you think he’s right).  We don’t need to lash out at others because we have so much confidence in our company, our products, and our services.  We are an innovative, happy, stable, profitable, and growing vendor in our space, and that’s where our attention goes
• Publicly trash talking your competition just gives your competition extra air time.  As PT Barnum famously said, “You can say anything you want about me, just make sure you spell my name right!”

Don’t get me wrong.  Competition is healthy.  It makes businesses stronger and can serve as a good focal point for them to rally.  It can even be healthy sometimes to demonize a competitor *internally* to serve as that rallying cry.  But I am not a fan of doing that *externally.*  I think it makes you look weak and just gives your competitor free advertising.

Several years ago, I blogged about the training program we created for entry-level employees at Return Path, including an embedded presentation that we used to use (which I hope still works on the blog after all these years).

My brother Michael, who is an experienced manager and leader in the digital marketing space, recently sent me this email that I thought I’d share along the same lines to colleagues who are new to the working world. Enjoy!

I signed up to give advice on LinkedIn, and had someone just starting her first job reach out to me asking for general advice. I came up with the attached, and thought it might make for a good blog post on Only Once. If you decide not to publish it, I’m totally cool with that, but thought I would share it. After all, you’re only a brand new employee once too 🙂

1) Listen as much as possible. One of my mentors was fond of reminding me, “God gave you two ears and one mouth!” You should listen at least twice as much as you talk. Get to know your environment and the people around you. Take notes. Observe as much as possible. Learn how others are able to provide value to the organization. Start to anticipate little things that need to be done, and then do them before your manager asks you to. Then bit by bit, use your creativity to start to develop bigger hypotheses about how you can provide even greater value. 

2) “In business, the best story wins.” That’s another quote from a former manager of mine that I have found to be universally true. People in business respond to many things: numbers, bullet points, graphs and visualizations. But they respond to all of those things better when they are wrapped in stories. A great book you can read about storytelling is not about business at all. It’s called “Story” by Robert McKee, and it’s about screenwriting. Despite its apparent lack of applicability, I assure you it will help you think about characters, goals, antagonists, drama, obstacles, and structure — all the elements that go into a good story. When you can present your hypotheses in the context of a story, about your business, your customers, what you want to achieve, how you will do it, and why it matters, you will build consensus and show leadership. Another great book you can read here, again, not about business at all, is “Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari. It really opened my eyes about how so much of human history and behavior is really just based on stories. 

3) Be lean. There is another book you should read, called “The Lean Startup”, by Eric Ries. This one is actually about business :). As you think about your hypotheses, think of them in the context of how you can get to market quickly and inexpensively. How you can easily perform experiments that will test your hypotheses. Some of your experiments will not achieve your desired result, but it’s not a failure if you can learn something that helps you pivot towards success. Learnings enable you to adjust and refine your hypotheses as you try to find more value for your organization. 

4) “Objections are requirements” and a corollary “ask questions, don’t make statements.” These two gems are from that first mentor in item number one. Even if you can tell great stories, and even if you can devise and execute lean experiments that achieve business results or provide validated learnings, sometimes “haters gonna hate.” There will always be inhibitors to your bold ideas, with reasons not to proceed with your experiments. Inertia is part of human nature. But don’t fear! When an inhibitor comes along, the first thing you do is start to ask questions. “Why do you object to x?” “Oh,” they’ll say, “because of y and z.” Then ask another question “So if we can resolve y and z, then can we proceed with x?” Rather than repeating yourself and making more statements, by asking questions you’ve just turned their objections into requirements. That inhibitor no longer has their reasons not to proceed with your bold idea. You’ve turned them from antagonists into allies. This kind of creative problem solving is critical to getting your experiments into market, and building consensus and showing your leadership without alienating anyone. 

5) Ok I know I said four, but this one is optional (albeit important). Have fun! Do not take yourself or your role too seriously. Show your personality. Be yourself. That sort of general approach to work and life will draw people to you. They will be relaxed and comfortable around you. They will look forward to meetings with you. You will be successful if you are a good listener, a creative thinker with bold ideas, a fantastic storyteller, an agile experiment developer, and a leader who can build consensus and drive value. But if you are all those things, and you’re fun to be around? Then you will be unstoppable.

Thank you, Michael, for the contribution!

(This is the second post in a series documenting the work I did in Colorado on the Governor’s COVID-19 Innovation Response Team – IRT.  Introductory post is here.)

Tuesday, March 17, Day 1

• Extended stay hotel does not have a gym.  Hopefully there is one at work
• Walking into office for the first time.  We are in a government building in a random town just south of Denver that houses the State Emergency Operations Center (SEOC) and the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.  These are the teams who are on point for emergency response in Colorado when there is any kind of fire, flood, cyberattack, or other emergency
• 
• 
• MAJOR Imposter Syndrome – I don’t know anything about anything
• 7:45 meeting with Stan
• 8:15 department briefing
• Met two deputies – Kacey Wulff and Kyle Brown.  Both seem awesome. On loan from governor’s health care office and insurance department
• Team “get to know you” was 4 minutes long.  So different than calm normal 
• Emergency Operations Center in Department of Public Health
• Small open room with over 100 people in it and everyone freaking out about not following best practices – no social distancing
• 
• Leader giving remote guidelines
• Lots of “Sorry, who are you and why are you here?”
• Local ops leader Mike Willis excellent – calm, inspirational, critical messages around teamwork, self-management, check ego at the door (turns out he is a retired Brigadier General)
• HHS call – maxxed at 300 participants, people not getting through, leader had to ask people to volunteer to get off the line (oops)
• Lunch and snacks in mass quantities here – it’s not quite Google, but this part does feel very startup.  I wonder if the Emergency Ops Center does this all the time or just in a crisis. Guessing crisis only but still super nice.  Also guessing I will gain weight this week between this and all gyms in the state being closed down
• Lots of new people and acronyms
• Multiple agencies at multiple layers of government require a lot of coordination and leadership that’s not always there, but everyone was incredibly clear, effective, low ego.  A lot of overlap
• Got my official badge – fancy
• Jared calls – just spoke to Pence, his guy is going to call you – tell him what we need…”uh, ok, now all I have to do is figure out what we need!”
• Fog of War – this room is healthy and bustling and a little disconnected from what’s going on, no freak out
• Kacey and call from Lisa about Seattle being on “Critical Care” because they don’t have enough supplies, meaning they are prepared to let the sickest people die – oh shit, we can’t let that happen here (or is it too late?)
• Got oriented, sort of
• Slight orientation to broader command structure and team
• My charter and structure are a little fuzzy, guess that’s why I’m here to figure that out
• Late night working back at hotel.  Thinking I will become a power user of UberEats this week

Wednesday, March 18, Day 2

• Gym at work is closed along with all gyms everywhere.  Looks like a lot of hotel floor exercises are in order
• Ideas and efforts and volunteers coming in like mad and random from the private sector – no one to corral, some are good, some are duplicative, all are well intentioned.  Lots of “solve the problem 5 ways”
• Shelter in place?  Every day saves thousands of lives in the model – credibility with governor
• State-level work is so inefficient for global and national problems, but Trump said “every man for himself” basically when it comes to states
• Not feeling productive
• Productivity is in the eye of the beholder.  Kacey totally calmed me down. Said I am adding value in ways I don’t think about (not sure if she was just being nice!):
  • Connection to Governor really useful for crisis team
  • Basic management and leadership stuff good
  • Asking dumb questions
  • Out of the box thinking
  • Liaison to industry and understanding that ecosystem
  • Arms and legs
  • People used to working in teams on things – different expectations in general
• Ok, so maybe I am helping
• Colleague tells me about Drizly, the UberEats equivalent for alcohol delivery. Good discovery.

Thursday, March 19, Day 3

• Weird – my back feels better than it has in months.  Maybe it’s the pilates, but still, seems weird.  I wonder if the higher altitude helps. If so, we will be moving to Nepal. Have to remember to mention that to family later
• Governor Policy meeting 9 am – “Cuomo is killing it” – words matter – “shelter in place” and “extreme social distancing” debate
• “The models are wrong – so let’s average them”
• We need 10,000 ventilators. We have 700.  Uh oh.
• Raised issues around test types and team capacity…Gov expanded scope to include app and still pushing hard on test scaling.  Gov asked for proposal for expanded scope and staff by 4:30. Guess that’s the day today!
• Recruited Brad to lead Private Sector side of the IRT’s work. Important to have a great counterpart on that side. Glad he agreed to do it, even though he’s already vice chair of another state task force on Economic Recovery
• Senior Ops leader interrupts someone during daily briefing – quietly says to the whole room “not vetted, not integrated, not helpful” – incredible.  In the moment, in public which normally you don’t want to do but had no choice in this circumstance – 6 words gave actionable and gentle feedback. Great example of quiet leadership
• Private sector inbound – well intentioned and innovative but overwhelming and hard to figure out how to fit in with public sector (e.g., financing to spin up distributed manufacturing)
• Team huddled and created proposal for new name, structure, staffing, charter, rationale, etc.
• Present to senior EOC staff for vetting, feedback
• Feels like I’m adding value finally – plan creation and “bring stakeholders along for the ride” presentation/vetting AND getting the team to stop being hair on fire and focus on thinking and planning and staffing
• Present to Gov – “brilliant” – then after, Kyle says “I’ve worked for multiple governors and senators, and this is the first time I’ve heard something called brilliant” (not sure it was brilliant)
• Now to operationalize it, stand up a team, replace myself so I can get home once this is marching in the right direction at the right speed
• Transferable skills (leadership, comms, strategy, planning) – not just missing context here but missing triple context – healthcare, public sector, CO
• Day 3.  Feels like longer
• Still, feels like adding value now.  Whew.  
• Dinner with a Return Path friend who came down to my hotel’s breakfast room, picked up takeout on the way, and sat 6 feet apart. 

Stay tuned for more tomorrow…

(This post, written by my co-founder Cathy Hawley, also appeared on Bolster.com)

The gig economy is a labor market where short-term or freelance roles are more prevalent than permanent positions. It’s generally characterized by having independent contractors rather than full-time positions, but in some locations and for some types of roles, gig workers may be part-time or fixed-term employees.

The gig economy that started with roles like artists, drivers and web designers is quickly expanding to include executive-level roles. There are  a few trends in today’s workplace that are driving this expansion. Startups and scaleups have more flexible, remote-friendly work environments and are looking for creative, less expensive ways of accelerating growth. Executives have shorter average job tenure and are more often displaced or between roles, and they are also interested in the flexibility that gig work can give them.

In a study conducted by MavenLink/Research Now, “The White Collar Gig Economy,” 47% of companies state they are looking to hire contractors to fill management and senior executive roles, including c-suite contractors. At the same time, 63% of full-time executives would switch to become a contractor, given the opportunity. These trends will be accelerated by the current economic downturn and recovery, as some companies have fewer resources, and more executives are displaced.

At the executive level, there are a few different types of roles that could be considered ‘gigs’. The most common two are coaching and project-based consulting.  Coaching or advising, and particularly CEO coaching and advising, has become very prevalent over the last 10 years. The CEO hires a coach who can help them navigate new situations and challenges. Often, CEO coaches stay with a CEO for a number of years, helping guide and support them through the stages of company growth. There are also coaches and advisors for other functional areas to provide similar support for other executives, although more commonly these coaches are hired for specific initiatives. 

Then there  is project-based consulting, where executive-level talent is hired to run a specific project such as reviewing a company’s packaging and pricing, performing due diligence on an acquisition, creating a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategy, or creating an investor deck for a fundraising event. This type of consulting isn’t new, and it’s similar to what large consulting firms offer. It seems to be more prevalent now for very senior roles than it ever has been in the past.

But the gig economy for executives now reaches well beyond coaches and consultants.  There are also executives who are hired into interim leadership roles while a company searches for a permanent placement. Some roles take a long time to find the right person, but there’s an urgent need for someone to take on the leadership mantle in the interim. If the interim executive is a good fit, and is open to it, it’s not uncommon for this individual to be considered for the permanent position.  “Try before you buy” works both ways — it can be good for the company and good for the executive, too.

An up-and-coming type of executive gig role is the fractional role. We are seeing this more and more in the last couple of years.  Fractional executives can either be consultants or employees, since the expectation is a long-term relationship, on a part-time basis. For example, 3 days or a certain number of hours per week. The fractional executive is responsible for all functional areas as a full-time executive in that same role. The company may be too small to need (or afford) their level of expertise on a full time basis, but needs more than just an advisor or project consultant. The fractional executive generally remains with a company until the company needs a full-time leader for that function, in which case either the fractional executive goes full-time, or the company hires someone new.  Fractional executives may support more than one client at a time, and may also come with a team of more junior functional experts who can support them to take on more work.

Finally, for our purposes at Bolster, joining a company’s board of directors could be considered taking a ‘gig’ role since it’s not a full-time executive role.  Startups and scaleups need independent directors, and their needs change based on their size, stage and strategy. We see a growing trend of companies contracting with directors for 1 -2 years rather than lifetime service. 

There’s a real opportunity right now for companies to capitalize on the expertise of this talent pool without having to hire them for long-term full time roles, and for executives who want to contribute their skills and expertise without the commitment of a 80-hour work week. Bolster is helping bring these two audiences together in a marketplace that matches on-demand executives with companies who need their services the most. Bolster also provides services for members so they can focus on their consulting rather than their business, and for companies to evaluate their executive teams and boards.

(Excerpted from Chapter 12 of Startup CEO)

As a CEO, one of the most important things you can do is solicit feedback about your own performance. Of course, this will work only if you’re ready to receive that feedback! What does that mean? It means you need to be really, really good at doing four things:

1. Asking for feedback
2. Accepting feedback gracefully
3. Acting on feedback
4. Asking for follow‐up feedback on the same topic to see how you did

In some respects, asking for it is the easy part, although it may be unnatural. You’re the boss, right? Why do you need feedback? The reality is that all of us can always benefit from feedback. That’s particularly true if you’re a first‐time CEO. Even more experienced CEOs change over time and with changing circumstances. Understanding how the board and your team experience your behavior and performance is one of the only ways to improve over time. It’s easier to ask for feedback if you’re specific. I routinely solicit feedback in the major areas of my job (which mirror the structure of this book):

Strategy. Do you think we’re on target with what we’re doing? Am I doing a good enough job managing to our goals while also being nimble enough to respond to the market?

Staff management/leadership. How effective am I at building and maintaining a strong, focused, cohesive team? Do I have the right people in the right roles at the senior staff level?

Resource allocation. Do I do a good enough job balancing among competing priorities internally? Are costs adequately managed?

Execution. How do the team and I execute versus our plans? What do you think I could be doing to make sure the organization executes better?

Board management/investor relations. Do you think our board is effective and engaged? Have I played enough of a role in leading the group? Do you as a director feel like you’re contributing all you can? Do I strike the right balance between asking and telling? Are communications clear enough and regular enough?

Accepting feedback gracefully is even harder than the asking part. You may or may not agree with a given piece of feedback, but the ability to hear it and take it in without being defensive is the only way to make sure that the feedback keeps coming. Sitting with your arms crossed and being argumentative sends the message that you’re right, they’re wrong, and you’re not interested. If you disagree with something that’s being said, ask questions. Get specifics. Understand the impact of your actions rather than explaining your intent.

The same logic applies to internalizing and acting on the feedback. If you fail to act on feedback, people will stop giving it to you. Needless to say, you won’t improve as a CEO. Fundamentally, why ask for it if you’re not going to use it? And that leads right into the fourth point, closing the loop with the person who gave you feedback on whether or not your actions achieved the desired change.

(This is the second in a series of three posts on this topic.)

In a previous post, I shared the difference between CEO Mentors and CEO Coaches. I’ll share with you here how to select the Mentors and Coach who are right for you.  First, you need to find candidates.  Whether you’re talking about CEO Coaches or CEO Mentors or both, getting referrals from trusted sources is the best way to go about this.  Those trusted sources could be your VC or independent board members, friends, fellow CEOs — or of course Bolster, where we have a significant number of Coaches and Mentors and have made it our business to vet and vouch for them.

Selecting a CEO Mentor is literally like selecting a teacher but at a vocational school, not at a research university.  You want to select someone who has done something several times or for several years; done it really well; documented it in some organized way (at least mentally); and can articulate what they did, why, what worked and what didn’t, and help you apply it to your situation.  Do you want to be taught how to be an electrician by someone with a PhD in Electrical Engineering, or by someone who has been a master electrician for 20 years?   Fit matters mostly around values.  It’s hard to get advice from someone whose values are quite different, as their experiences and their metrics for what did and didn’t work won’t apply well to yours.  Fit is a lot less around personality, although you have to be able to get along and communicate with the person at a basic level  Find someone with the right experience set that you can learn from RIGHT NOW.  Or at least this year.  Maybe the person is the right mentor next year, maybe not.  Depends on what you need.  For example, if you’re running a $10mm revenue DTC company, find someone who has scaled a company in the DTC or adjacent eCommerce space to at least $25-50mm. 

Although I’ve been very international in getting mentoring as a CEO over the years, I’ve never hired a formal CEO Mentor. Several people, from my dad to my independent directors to the members of my CEO Forum have played that role for me at different times over the years. Knowing what I know now, I’m working with CEO Mentors who have experience with talent marketplaces at different scale, since this is a new industry for me.

Selecting a CEO Coach is different.  I got lucky in my selection of a CEO Coach almost 20 years ago.  My board member Fred Wilson told me I needed to work with one, I naively rolled my eyes and said ok, he introduced me to Marc Maltz, I told Marc something like “I need a coach because clearly I need to learn how to manage my Board better,” and for some reason, he decided to take the assignment.  I got lucky because Marc ended up being exactly the right coach for me, going on 20 years now, but I didn’t know that at the time.  

Selecting a CEO Coach is all about who you “click with” personality wise, and what you need in order to be pushed to grow developmentally.  CEO Coaches come on a spectrum ranging from what I would call “Quasi-Psychiatrist” on one end, to “Quasi-Management Consultant” on the other end.  The former can be incredibly helpful — just note that you will find yourself talking about your thoughts, feelings, and family of origin a fair bit as a means of uncovering problems and solutions.  The latter can be helpful as well — just note that you will find yourself talking about business strategy and having someone hold up the proverbial mirror so you can see you the way other people see you as the CEO, quite a bit.  There is no right or wrong universal answer here to what makes someone the right choice for you.  For me, if one end of the spectrum is a 1 and the other is a 5, I prefer working with people who are in the 3-4 range.  

Therapy and coaching are different, though.  A good CEO Coach who is a 1 will refer clients to therapy if they see the need. While coaching can “feel” therapeutic, and actually may be therapeutic, it is not a replacement for therapy. The differences between the 1s and the 5s are not just style differences but also really what you want the content of the coaching to be.  A 1 is going to help you discover and drive to your leadership style.  A 5 is going to help you align those decisions to how you actually act, what approaches you bring to the organization and how you address challenges.  Some CEO Coaches can move back and forth between all of these, but knowing where you sit with your needs relative to the coach’s natural style when you pick a coach is critical.

I know CEOs who have shown tremendous growth as humans and leaders with Coaches who are 1s and Coaches who are 5s.  A good CEO Coach is someone you can work with literally forever.   

I always encourage CEOs to interview multiple Coaches and specifically ask them what their coaching process is like and what their coaching philosophy is.  How do they typically start engagements.  How structured or unstructured are they in their work?  Check references and ask some of their other CEO clients what it’s been like to work with them.  This is all true to a much lesser extent with Mentors.  In both cases, you should probably do a test session or two before signing up for a longer-term engagement.  You wouldn’t buy a car without taking it for a test drive.  This is an even more consequential decision.  

And in both cases, there should be no ego in the process.  You should never feel like you’re being sold by a CEO Coach or CEO Mentor.  And they shouldn’t feel hurt by you picking someone else, either.  Alignment and chemistry are so critical – there is no way to have that with every person, and the good professionals in this industry should know that.

The bottom line is that hiring a CEO Mentor is low risk. If it’s not working out, you stop engaging. Hiring a CEO Coach is a longer-term decision, and it’s worth having couple of sessions with a coach before making the commitment.

Next post in the series coming:  How to get the most out of working with a CEO Mentor or CEO Coach 

(This is the third in a series of three posts on this topic.)

In previous posts (here, here) , I talked about the difference between Mentors and Coaches and also how to select the right ones for you. Once you’ve selected a Mentor or Coach, here are some tips to get the most out of your engagement.

Starting to work with a CEO Mentor is fairly easy. Give them some materials to help understand your business, and then come prepared to every session with a list of 1-2 topics that are keeping you up at night where you want to benefit from the person’s experience.

Kicking off a CEO Coach engagement is more in-depth. I always recommend starting to work with a CEO Coach by doing a DEEP 360.  Not one that’s a bland anonymous survey instrument, but one that involves the Coach doing 15-20 in-depth interviews with a wide range of people from team to Board to others in the organization to people you’ve worked with outside the organization, including some non-professional contacts.  Let the Coach really learn about you from others.  The reason for this is that, although you may have an area of development that you want to focus on (like I did when I met Marc), you may actually need help in other areas a lot more acutely.

In general,  I’d say these are a few good rules of thumb for getting the most out of your Coach or Mentor relationship and sessions of work together:

• Do your homework.  If you have an assignment to read an article, take a survey, or just write something up, either do it or cancel the next meeting or it will be a waste of everyone’s time
• Be present.  Step away from your desk. Turn off email.  Silence your phone.  These are some of the most valuable times for your own personal development and growth, and they are few and far between when you get to be a CEO.  Treasure them
• Bring your whole self.  Even if your coach is a full 5 on the Shrink-to-Management Consultant scale I mentioned above, people are people, and you’re no exception.  You have a bad day at home — it will show through at work and it will impact your Coach conversations (maybe less so your Mentor ones).  Don’t ignore it.  Mention it up front
• Don’t bullshit.  You know when you’re wrong about something or have made a mistake.  You may or may not be great about admitting it publicly, or even admitting it to yourself.  ADMIT IT TO YOUR COACH.  Otherwise, why bother having one?
• Encourage primary data collection.  The biggest place I’ve seen coaching relationships fail is when the Coach or Mentor only has access to a single point of information about what’s happening in the organization — you.  Even if you’re not in full-on 360 mode, encourage your Coach or Mentor to spend time with others in the organization or on your board here and there and have a direct line of communication with them.  If they don’t and all they’re working off is your perspective on situations, their output will be severely limited or subject to their own conjecture.  Especially if you can’t get the prior bullet point right (garbage in, garbage out!)
• Make it your agenda even if it means changing on the fly.  You may be working on an analysis of your team’s Myers-Briggs profile with your Coach – and that’s the topic of your next meeting – but right before the meeting, you learn that one of your CXOs is resigning.  Change the agenda.  It’s ok.  It’s your time, make it work for you
• Learn to fish.  At the end of the day, a good CEO Coach should offer you ways of thinking about things, ways of being, ways of learning in your organization, processes to give you the ability to do some elements of this by yourself – not just answering questions for you.  Sports trainers are useful for an athlete’s entire career to push them harder in workouts, but they also teach athletes how to work out on their own
• Reality check the advice.  Make sure to test the strategies that Coaches or Mentors are giving you against your organization.  All strategies won’t work in all organizations.  These conversations should offer a variety of strategies – you can pick one or pick none and do something totally different.  The value isn’t in being told what to do, it is in going through the process of deciding what to do for YOUR organization with some expert inputs and reflections on other experiences
• Close the loop.  I’ve written before about how to solicit feedback as a CEO.  To make sure your coaching work is effective, be sure to include feedback loops with your key stakeholders (team and board) on the things you’re working on with your CEO Coach

It’s worth the money.  CEO Coaches can be really expensive.  Like really, really expensive.  $500-1,500/hour expensive.  CEO Mentors can be free and informal, but sometimes they charge as well or ask for advisor equity grants.  Even if you have a thin balance sheet, don’t be shy about adding the expense, and you shouldn’t pay for this personally.  Adding 10-20% to the cost of your compensation will potentially make you twice as effective a CEO.  If your board doesn’t support the expense…well, then you may have a different problem.

There’s a lot written publicly about this topic.  Jason Lemkin at SaaStr has a particularly good post that really puts a fine point on it.  And the coaching team at Beyond CEO Coaching a new boutique coaching firm specializing in coaching black CEOs, writes in “Who are you not to be great?”, “You can play it safe and reduce your risks and likely the rewards, or you can go big.  We at Beyond CEO Coaching want to help you to go big.”

By the way, this entire framework applies to non-CEOs as well.  Every professional would benefit from having a Coach and a Mentor in their life, even if those aren’t paid consultants but more senior colleagues or members of the company’s People Team.  Sometimes a Mentor and a Coach are one and the same…sometimes they are not.

Thanks to a large number of Bolster members I know personally who are CEO Coaches and Mentors for reviewing these posts — Chad Dickerson, Bob Cramer, Tim Porthouse, Marc Maltz, Lynne Waldera, Dave Karnstedt, and Mariquita Blumberg.

This question has been on my mind for years. In the wake of Georgia passing its new voting regulations, a many of America’s large company CEOs are taking some kind of vocal stance (Coca Cola) or even action (Major League Baseball) on the matter. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told CEOs to “stay the hell out of politics” and proceeded to walk that comment back a little bit the following day. The debate isn’t new, but it’s getting uglier, like so much of public discourse in America.

Former American Express CEO Harvey Golub wrote an op-ed earlier this week in The Wall Street Journal entitled Politics is Risky Business for CEOs (behind a paywall), the subhead of which sums up what my point of view has always been on this topic historically — “It’s imprudent to weigh in on issues that don’t directly affect the company.” His argument has a few main points:

• CEOs may have opinions, but when they speak, they speak for and represent their companies, and unless they’re speaking about an issue that effects their organization, they should have Board approval before opening their mouths
• Whatever CEOs say about something political will by definition upset many of their employees and customers in this polarized environment (I agree with this point a lot of the time and wrote about it in the second edition of Startup CEO)
• There’s a slippery slope – comment on one thing, you have to comment on all things, and everything descends from there

So if you’re with Harvey Golub on this point, you draw the boundaries around what “directly affects” the company — things like employment law, the regulatory regime in your industry, corporate tax rates, and the like.

The Economist weighed in on this today with an article entitled CEO activism in America is risky business (also behind a paywall, sorry) that has a similar perspective with some of the same concerns – it’s unclear who is speaking when a CEO delivers a political message, messages can backfire or alienate stakeholders, and it’s unclear that investors care.

The other side of the debate is probably best represented by Paul Polman, longtime Unilever CEO, who put climate change, inequality, and other ESG-oriented topics at the center of his corporate agenda and did so both because he believed they were morally right AND that they would make for good business. Unilever’s business results under Polman’s leadership were transformational, growing his stock price almost 300% in 10 years and outpaced their peers, all as a “slow growth” CPG company. Paul’s thinking on the subject is going to be well documented in his forthcoming book, Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take, which he is co-authoring with my good friend Andrew Winston and which will come out later this year.

While I still believe that on a number of issues in current events, CEOs face a lose-lose proposition by wading into politics, I’m increasingly moving towards the Paul Polman side of the debate…but not in an absolute way. As I’ve been wrestling with this topic, at first, I thought the definition of what to weigh in on had to come down to a definition of what is morally right. And that felt like I was back in a lose-lose loop since many social wedge issues have people on both sides of them claiming to be morally right — so a CEO weighing in on that kind of issue would be doomed to alienate a big percentage of stakeholders no matter what point of view he or she espouses.

But I’m not sure Paul and Andrew are absolutists, and that’s the aha for me. I believe their point is that CEOs need to weigh in on the things that directly affect their companies AND ALSO weigh in on the things that indirectly affect their companies.

So if you eliminate morality from the framework, where do you draw the line between things that have indirect effects on companies and which ones do not? If I back up my scope just a little bit, I quickly get to a place where I have a different and broader definition of what matters to the functioning of my industry, or to the functioning of commerce in general without necessarily getting into social wedge issues. For want of another framework on this, I landed on the one written up by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum in That Used to be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back, which I summarized in this post a bunch of years ago — that America has lost its way a bit in the last 20-40 years because we have strayed from the five-point formula that has made us competitive for the bulk of our history:

• Providing excellent public education for more and more Americans
• Building and continually modernizing our infrastructure
• Keeping America’s doors to immigration open
• Government support for basic research and development
• Implementation of necessary regulations on private economic activity

So those are some good things to keep in mind as indirectly impacting commercial interests and American competitiveness in an increasingly global world, and therefore are appropriate for CEOs to weigh in on. And yes, I realize immigration is a little more controversial than the other topics on the list, but even most of the anti-immigration people I know in business are still pro legal immigration, and even in favor of expanding it in some ways.

And that brings us back to Georgia and the different points of view about whether or not CEOs should weigh in on specific pieces of legislation like that. Do voting rights directly impact a company’s business? Not most companies. But what about indirect impact? I believe that having a high functioning democracy that values truth, trust, and as widespread legal voter participation as possible is central to the success of businesses in America, and that at the moment, we are dangerously close to not having a high functioning democracy with those values.

I have not, as Mitch McConnell said, “read the whole damn bill,” but it doesn’t take a con law scholar to note that some pieces of it which I have read — no giving food or water to people in voting lines, reduced voting hours, and giving the state legislature the unilateral ability to fire or supersede the secretary of state and local election officials if they don’t like an election’s results — aren’t measures designed to improve the health and functioning of our democracy. They are measures designed to change the rules of the game and make it harder to vote and harder for incumbents to lose. That is especially true when proponents of this bill and similar ones in other states keep nakedly exposing the truth when they say that Republicans will lose more elections if it’s easier for more people to vote, instead of thinking about what policies they should adopt in order to win a majority of all votes.

And for that reason, because of that bill, I am moving my position on the general topic of whether or not CEOs should wade into politics from the “direct impact” argument to the “indirect impact” one — and including in that list of indirect impacts improving the strength of our democracy by, among other things, making it as easy as possible for as many Americans to vote as possible and making the administration of elections as free as possible from politicians, without compromising on the principle of minimizing or eliminating actual fraud in elections, which by all accounts is incredibly rare anyway.

I love having independent directors on my Board.  They are a great third leg of the stool alongside a CEO/Founder and VCs.  They provide the same kind of pattern matching and outside point of view as VCs — but from a completely different perspective, that of an operator or industry expert.  The good ones are CEOs or CXOs who aren’t afraid to challenge you.  Equally important, they’re not afraid to challenge your VCs.  At Return Path, I always had 2 or 3 independent directors at any given time to balance out VCs, and some have become great long term friends like Scott Petry, Jeff Epstein, and Scott Weiss.  At Bolster, we’re already having a great experience with our first independent, Cristina Miller, and we’re about to add a second independent.  And I’ve served as an independent director multiple times.

So as you can imagine, I was shocked by one of the headlines coming out of the Board Benchmark study we ran at Bolster across 250+ clients (detailed blog post with a bunch of charts and graphs) that only ⅓ of companies in the study have any independent directors.  Even larger companies at the Series C and D levels only have independent directors 60% and 67% of the time.  What a missed opportunity for so many companies.

Less surprising, though still sobering, were the numbers on diversity that came out of the study.  79% of the directors in the sample are white.  86% are men.  43% of boards are completely racially homogenous (most all-white) while 80% are mostly racially homogeneous (meaning only one diverse member); 56% are gender homogenous (most all men), while 87% are mostly gender homogenous (only one female).  For an industry that is spending a lot of time talking about diversity in leadership teams and on boards, that’s disappointing.

Here’s the linkage of the two topics:  The solution to the board diversity problem lies in having more independent directors, since management and VC board seats are often both “fixed” and non-diverse.  Independent seats are the easiest to fill with diverse candidates.  Conveniently, more independent directors also leads to higher quality boards.  

In partnership with some DEI experts, our study also includes some suggested actionable tips for CEOs and board leaders, which I encourage you to read. There are really three simple (IMO) steps to having more diverse boards, and there is some good news in the Bolster study around these points:

1. Add independent director seats.  50% of the companies in the survey either have or expect to have an independent board seat open within 12 months.  That’s a good start, but honestly, I can’t imagine running any board without at least 1-2 independent directors (up to 3-4 for larger companies), starting on Day 1.  Given that only ⅓ of companies in the sample have any independent board members at all, the 50% number feels quite low.
   
2. Open the recruiting funnel to include first-time directors.  Historically, companies have mainly targeted current or former CEOs or people who have board experience to be independent directors.  That is a recipe to perpetuate having mostly white male board members.  But Bolster has done a few dozen board searches so far, and 66% of those clients have expressed a willingness to take on first-time directors, as long as they are “board ready,” which we define as having been on any kind of board, not just a corporate board; having reported to a founder or CEO and had regular interaction with and presentations to a board; or having significant experience as a formal or informal advisor.  Once you widen the funnel to include all candidates who meet those criteria, you can very easily have a diverse slate of highly qualified candidates.  Bolster is a great source of these candidates (this is a real focal point for our business), but there are plenty of other online or search firm sources as well.
   
3. Have the courage to limit the number of management/investor board members.  Whether or not you can add independent board members may be a function of how many seats you have to play with in your corporate charter.  Of course, you can add seats indefinitely, but there’s no reason to have a 7-person board for your Series A company.  My rule of thumbs on this are simple:  (a) Only one founder member of the management team on the Board – more than that is a waste of a valuable board slot; and (b) VCs should always be less than 50% of your board members, so as new ones roll on, old ones should roll off – or add a VC and an independent at the same time.  Both of these take serious effort and courage, both are worth it, and both probably merit a longer blog post someday.

The Board Benchmark study also had a wealth of information about compensation for independent directors — cash vs. stock, what kind of stock, how much stock, vesting and acceleration provisions. 

Here’s a Slideshare of the full survey results, in case this and/or the Bolster blog link isn’t detailed enough for you:

If you’re interested in learning more, the survey is free to take and all the granular results (including comp benchmarks) are available to benchmark against your company if you take it. Just email me if you’re interested at [email protected].

I just did a podcast recording the other day for someone who asked me the biggest mistakes founders make and what to do about them. I divided my response into “early stage” and “later stage” founders. Here’s a summary of what I said about early stage founders.

1. They cling to a “good enough person” or someone who is a good performer but a weak cultural fit because they either feel beholden to that person for their output, or worse, they’re actually afraid of losing them because they’ll miss a milestone or maybe trigger some other departure.
   
   The “what to do” of course is to have courage and make the change! I wrote an essay years ago in Brad Feld and David Cohen’s book, Do More Faster, entitled Hire slowly, Fire quickly, in which I compared a poor cultural fit to a cancer that can infect the whole body of your company. A “good enough” person obviously isn’t quite that toxic, but someone like that can still prevent you from achieving your potential. In either case, the faster you realize what’s going on and make a move, the better off you are.
   
2. They get the balance wrong between “leading with vision” and “listening to customers”. Both are important for founders, but you can’t do too much of either. It’s really easy to get led to a too-narrow Product/Market Fit definition that has you building something awesome that only a dozen customers will be excited about That said, founders also have to listen if enough potential customers people say no. Your vision could just be too far ahead of the market.
   
   You have to get around this by constantly checking your enthusiasm with a mix of cold hard logic. Lots of market traction is great — but is all that traction coming from the same type of customer? Have you run your idea or wireframes by different segments, different buyers, different sizes of company (if B2B) or lots of different demographics (if B2C)? Are all of them equally enthusiastic and willing to buy? A complete lack of market traction when you’re sure your vision right is equally vexing. If literally everyone is saying “no” or worse, some polite but noncommittal version of yes, are you working to shape the vision, or at least shape how you articulate it? Sometimes your vision might be right, but your messaging might be off. Try different ones on for size.
   
3. They focus on fundraising and valuation over business fundamentals. Especially in this day and age, it’s really easy to get caught up in the “more money” hamster wheel. Raise, raise, raise. Finish one round, immediately start working on the next.
   
   In the end, business fundamentals matter — no fundamentals, no business (e.g., no next round). More than that, spend more time caring about your customers and learning and telling stories about how you made their lives better with your product or service. That’s more important to your next fundraise than just blowing through one round of money to get to the next.

Next week: the later stage founder answer (link won’t be live until 12/16/2021).