Held on 23 March 2023

Making It Up As You Go

This is an exec member exclusive video.

I had no idea I was the CTO until the founder brought me a stack of business cards with that title on them. With no experience and few models to follow, I invented my role and made up approaches, trying various ways to grow and improve my team until I found successful ones. The secret I discovered later is that every executive feels this way.

The good news is that handled correctly, uncertainty and disruption are valuable, positive factors. Imagine answering "When will the big project be done?" with a confident "I don't know"—and then a convincing explanation of the benefits of flexibility that come with not being sure. Counterintuitively, you build respect and trust when you act on incomplete information and make recoverable mistakes that drive learning. And you're much better placed to handle inevitable shocks and surprises like "intelligent" chatbots and sudden bank failures.

These are lessons that those in the acting profession learnt long ago from their experiences live on stage, and they have some practises we can learn from that can really help us executives get comfortable with the unexpected. Join me in this free Zoom session to discuss:

How you can say "yes, and" to the most outrageous, out-of-the-blue requests from customers or salespeople.
Why too much planning constrains productivity and makes you wooden and unresponsive, like an overly detailed script.
What to do when you're called on the carpet to account for something you know nothing about—and how to practise for this kind of unexpected demand.