If there is one thing I know about leadership and working and career is that when you interact with the CEO, or anyone on the c-suite, you need to minimize your time and maximize your impact. More practically speaking, you need to be the one who says, “I gotta run.” And then walk away.
“Well that seems counter-intuitive,” you say. “How can I maximize my impact, when I spend the least amount of time possible with the CEO?”
Easy.
The shorter your interactions, the more interactions you will have.
“What?!”
That’s right.
Think of every interaction you have in the office. There is always one person who you see coming down the hall, and you want to avoid them. Mostly because you have someplace to be and this person will talk your ear off.
CEOs have even shorter attention-spans and much less tolerance for the details about how difficult your last customer escalation was.
You do not want the CEO to see YOU coming down the hall and think, “Oh no. Here comes Bill to tell me how hard it is to get the product team to prioritize feature requests from his customers. How am I going to get out of this?”
This is tough love people. Don’t be that person.
I asked Nils Vinje, author of the new book, 30 Day Leadership Playbook: Your Guide To Becoming The Leader You Have Always Wanted To Be, about how we can stay out of the details when we talk to execs.
Nils had an answer: Framework thinking.
Nils has been on Helping Sells Radio four times now (Ep 5, Ep 84, Ep 121 (at the Gain Pulse conference), and this one.
Our main problem when we speak to CEOs is that we spend time on details. CEOs don’t want details unless they specifically ask. They won’t ask. And it’s hard for us NOT to provide details because that’s our life.
We have to speak to the CEO, convey useful information, without giving details.
When the CEO asks, “How’s customer success going?”
You should say, “The renewal ownership in customer success is going well. We already have 3 new expansion opportunities.”
You want to say, “I am meeting with Sally (VP of sales) next Thursday. No, wait….on Friday. She had to reschedule our meeting from Monday. But we’re planning to talk about transitioning the renewal process from sales to customer success. I don’t know how this is going to work. I don’t think customer success should own the renewal. We should be advocates for customers not sales people. You can’t advocate for customers and sell to them. Customers won’t trust us. I’ve been doing customer success since before it was called customer success, and I’ve never seen it work. I mean…maybe it can, and I am open to it. So that’s what Sally and I are going to talk about.”
It goes on and on and then you make the CEO cut you off so she can move on with their life.
The CEO likes you.
The CEO thinks you are productive. And professional.
But the CEO wants you to figure all those details out. The CEO wants you to not base your opinion on what happened in the past, but see the possibility of what we can create going forward. It’s called innovation for a reason.
And most importantly, the CEO wants you to say in 20 words, what you want to say in 200.
According to Nils, you can do that with framework thinking….and it is part of his leadership pillar number 3: leading with communications.
This was the most important part of our discussion.
Framework thinking.
Framework thinking.
That is me…talking to myself.
More about Nils
Nils Vinje is the founder and CEO of 30DayLeadership.com. He is a 4-time Helping Sells Radio guest, Customer Success expert, leadership coach, consultant, speaker, and author. Nils inspires people everywhere to become the leader they have always wanted to be.
To order a copy of Nils' book: 30 Day Leadership Playbook: Your Guide To Becoming The Leader You Have Always Wanted To Be, please visit 30dayleadership.com.
197 Nils Vinje To lead: Operate at a framework level