Great advice but I disagree that “most executives aren’t awful”. Leadership is a hard and opaque role. More often than not the wrong people are promoted to management. Poor leadership is the norm, not the exception.
There are many companies, often older than the ones Will has worked at, which, as you say, tend to have executives with a far lower quality. A non-trivial amount that yes, I'd call awful, especially after seeing the difference with the excellent ones. It's hard to run a good company with a bad executive team though. Therefore, I'd argue that the right take is that, if you are working for a firm that is doing well over average, Will's take is the right one, and that when it isn't right in your environment, you should consider greener pastures.
Seems about right. We draft 10-20 design documents for every one implemented.
Perhaps a team delivered a mediocre or poor outcome, but was that outcome potentially the best result due to organizational constraints? I suppose that I’m just pointing out that since leadership can be “hard and opaque” judging it’s effectiveness can be just as hard
I think the problem is in conflating the two so the leading gets forgotten because most of the time is spent managing.
A lot of large institutional companies effectively work "on rails", so loads of C-level execs there are glorified middle managers whose only talent is climbing the greasy pole.
Young companies though, they have "real" go-getter execs.
Finding out who is who, is a skill in itself.
I think you are wrong.
"Most executives arn't awful" - true. They are sociopathic.
- values?
- characteristics?
- abilities?
- experience?
- education?
Best way to tell them apart in interviews?