Bonus: How do you CEO? / Slack CEO - Lidiane Jones
A learning journey of how startup CEOs work.
I wrote the 16-piece ‘How do you CEO’ series that culminated in a summary blog post.
BUT…
I was lucky enough to have lunch with Lidiane and the Slack team, so I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to ask her how she CEOs!
Note:
This was only a 5-10 mins subtopic.
My notes are unfortunately mostly from memory, not verbatim, as I just jotted down the key points on my phone.
When we talked, Lidiane had only been 60 days in the new job.
#17 Lidiane Jones / CEO @ Slack
How do you CEO?
Comments are not verbatim, just from memory!
I think about it in three parts.
The first and most important are the People, the team.
My priority is to get to know the team, build relationships and empower.
Note: that’s why Lidiane was in Australia, to get to know the team in person.
The second are our Customers.
Meeting them.
Understanding the pain points.
Gathering product feedback.
Note: the team was eager for any product feedback to figure out where it should sit on the roadmap.
The third is to figure out how I can effectively Scale My Time.
There are only X hours in my week.
What can I get help with from my incredible EA.
What communication can I do to provide clarity and alignment in a 1 to many format.
How are you spending your first 90 days?
When we talked Lidiane was 60 days into her CEO role.
I’m approaching it actively.
The first 30 days were all about the team and culture for me.
Get to know as many of the offices and team members as possible.
Immerse myself in the culture that we have.
The second 30 days are all about customers.
Right now, I’m diving deep into our customer feedback.
How should we position ourselves?
What is our product uniquely good at and what does our roadmap look like?
What is out go-to-market?
The third 30 days I’ll go deep with investors and analysts.
Once I’ve got a good grasp on the team, culture and customers, I’m keen on understanding our investors and public market analysts. It is an important piece of my responsibility.
Upcoming: ’How do you Exec Coach?’ ❤️🔥
For my next series, I really want to learn from Exec Coaches.
What makes them effective?
How do they magically dig into the biggest issues?
How do they solve them?
Do you have an Executive Coach?
If you do and can recommend him/her - please leave their detail here (1 min).
As there are no good places to find reliable Exec Coaches, I’ll start a list.
Bonus: Puddle Pods 🍪
Weekly bite-sized mini-productivity tips/tricks in your inbox.
Launching it this week 🚀
