Ethan Evans

I was a VP at three startups before I came to Amazon with a “lowly“ Senior Manager title. I was a competent leader and I liked having the VP title, but I was not qualified to be a VP in a giant business like Amazon. Here are three key things you need to do to be an executive at a big company:

At my largest startup I had managed 30 people... the same scope as an Amazon Senior Manager. So my new title was appropriate. But of course it felt like a big step down.

Titles at small firms and startups are more symbolic of your status relative to the scale of the company than your true executive capability.

Having the VP title at this point in my career didn’t make me stupid or bad or incompetent, but it also didn’t make me executive material for a multinational corporation. If you are currently an executive at a small firm, I am not trying to offend you. I am trying to prepare you to move to a bigger company and become an executive there faster than I did, if you so choose.

To be an executive at a large company, you must:

1) Develop Strategic Vision

2) Lead multi-directionally

3) Lead with influence

Each of these exist to some degree in smaller firms and startups as well. However, strategy is more straightforward when focusing on a single business or product. And, the entire team is smaller, so the need to influence large groups of peers or higher level executives is not as pronounced.

In a massive company, this becomes almost the entire job of the executive.

To start thinking strategically like an executive, keep in mind the difference between planned strategy and emergent strategy. Planned strategy is a deliberate plan to start a new business, while emergent strategy is a response to a trend that is already happening in the business. Consider both as you think.

Once you begin thinking like an executive, you need to lead like one. As a manager or a leader in a small firm, most of your leadership is “downwards”- giving directions to those below you. In a large company, executive leadership is mostly influencing your peers. Since you can no longer use authority as a lever for your leadership, you need to develop your influence.

Ways to develop your influence outside of simply speaking and writing well are:

a) Listening to others and asking sincere questions.

b) Gathering your facts and data.

c) Cultivating your reputation.

d) Controlling your conduct.

e) Building your relationships.

To learn more about how to do each of these, read this week’s newsletter. I discuss both the strategic thinking and the leadership sides of being an executive in depth.

Read here: https://buff.ly/4gEaL67

Readers- What are other differences between leading a small company and leading a larger one?

I traded my time for money for 33 years, from 18 to 51.

Recently I turned 55 and now I often feel “short of time“ before old age closes in.

Here are five lessons on how to make the best use of your time so that you live the most of the life you want, rather than just “working.“

I was in school or working 60 hours a week from age 18 to 51. During those 33 years, I had limited personal time.

Like most people, focused on my career and money.

For me, this “worked out,“ in that I had the money to retire just before my 51st birthday. This leads to the first two lessons:

Lesson 1: Live below your means. Many of my peers are still working because they inflated their spending as their incomes increased.

Lesson 2: Be efficient with your career. I “climbed“ well and also had a lot of luck which allowed me to retire at 51. Without extreme luck, you must “climb well.“ See “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant“ for more.

Despite things “working out” so well, it is easy for me to get a bit depressed.

How many more years will my body allow me to hike or ski hard? How many more years will my mind be sharp enough and give me enough energy to teach you about high performance careers?

Now that I am not working a corporate job, I “work“ perhaps 20 hours a week.

So, if we say that during my working years I had at most 20 hours of free time per week, but now I have 40+, then I have double the free time.

I can experience two years worth of free time activities per year compared to when I worked full-time.

I can tell you that this is a better way to live... so I want to help you live this way sooner.

Here are three other lessons to consider:

Lesson 3: Careers are great, but they will not love you back. So, enjoy the work for its own sake, but do not expect most of your teammates to remain in your life after you leave. Earn money and love your work, but keep it in perspective.

Lesson 4: Never let vacation expire! You can never get your youth back. I wish I had done things that, while not impossible at age 55, would have been much easier at 25. While I do have more free hours now, how I can use them is more limited.

Lesson 5: Be sure to do the things that require youth while you have it.

We all have a finite amount of time, so how are you living now to maximize your total life happiness?

What “should“ you prioritize this week?


In addition to writing here, I teach courses aimed at helping you maximize your career impact. My latest class is on successfully leading and delivering very large, complex technology projects. Learn from my experience:

https://buff.ly/4i1b5gx

For a few more days, this course is on sale for 25% off.

“Executive presence” helped me reach VP at Amazon. The biggest challenge when it comes to improving your executive presence is simply defining it.

Here is how I define it: Executive presence is the ability to command a room, hold attention, and present yourself as someone who should be trusted and followed.

It is a composite of many skills.

In order to break executive presence into specific areas for improvement, I will borrow from the author Sylvia Ann Hewlett. She breaks it down into three categories:
→ 60% gravitas
→ 30% communication
→ 10% appearance

Gravitas, according to Hewlett, is the collection of things that make you worthy of attention and respect. The two main traits for this are your confidence and decisiveness.

People follow leaders who are sure of themselves and remain determined and composed under pressure. If you project confidence and decisiveness, you have gravitas.

Part two, communication skills, are clearer. Communication skills include your ability to speak in front of a crowd, but also your ability to hold attention, manage a room, read an audience, make others feel heard, and present your authentic self.

The final component, appearance, is not about being attractive or looking a specific way. It is about using your dress and grooming to show you are a person who takes their work seriously and expects to be taken seriously in return.

Appearance is most important as a first impression, when you are first meeting people. Research shows that first impressions are formed very quickly and people usually seek evidence to confirm their initial judgments. So, if you present yourself as serious and professional, others will look to confirm this as opposed to looking for things that contradict it.

To improve your executive presence, identify which of these 3 areas need work and then make a plan. Here are some strategies to consider:

For public speaking, find small, safe audiences to practice in front of. Consider joining a Toastmasters club. To learn to read a room, partner with a friend after a meeting and discuss what each of you saw.

To display calm and practice emotional control, try meditation and build your emotional intelligence skills to help you handle crises.

To increase your influence, read “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” and then prepare your arguments in advance (rather than on the fly).

Finally, for appearance, consider a professional stylist like a Nordstrom personal shopper to help you pick out clothes, and go to the barber or hairstylist slightly more frequently.

These costs are investments in your career growth.

I will be running a free, live webinar on Wednesday, July 9th called “How to Build Executive Presence.”

I will give a short talk and then take questions live.

Sign up for the free event here: https://buff.ly/DtOqO0i

Readers — Executive presence is tricky and abstract. How do you think about it and work on it?