Yamini Rangan

Dear Leaders,

Today, I want to reflect on a topic that I believe all leaders struggle with at some point in our careers: work/life balance. I’m a CEO, but I’m also a mom, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a yoga practitioner, and an avid reader. So if you’ve ever felt like there aren’t enough hours in a day to grow both personally and professionally, you aren’t alone.

It’s tempting to push ourselves to juggle every aspect of our careers, families, and passions flawlessly. But that isn’t sustainable. I often see leaders burnout trying to ‘do it all’. And, while we can’t magically create more hours in a day, we can choose to take a different approach to balance our work and life. We can change our perspective, and that’s powerful.

With that, I want to share three reflections that have helped me navigate this throughout my career.

1. Think about presence not balance. The word ‘balance’ inherently suggests tension, a push and pull, a difficult tightrope walk. But we shouldn’t need to compromise life for work, or sacrifice our career aspirations to succeed personally. That’s why instead of trying to find work/life balance, we should focus on work/life presence.

I realized this many years ago when my son was in elementary school and I joined his class for a field trip. I was proud of myself for taking the day off work to spend time with him, but it was the end of the quarter, so I ended up being on my phone a lot throughout the day. Later on, I asked my son if he enjoyed the field trip and he said no, it was terrible because I was on my phone the whole time. I learned that day that it’s not about balance, it’s about presence. It’s about the quality of time I spend with my family, not the quantity of time.

2. Don't let guilt overrun you. If you are on parental leave or taking the afternoon off to do something that brings you joy, don’t feel guilty for not working. Just be present. Similarly, if you are at work, be present instead of letting guilt creep in for not being at home. As a busy leader, guilt won’t serve you. So be intentional about your time so that you can be in the moment, guilt-free.

3. Create a vision for yourself and prioritize. It is easy to get overwhelmed with the long list of things you can be doing every day. And, when you are overwhelmed you lose perspective and purpose. So, start with intentionality and create a vision for where you want to be at the end of this year and at the end of the next 5 years - write it down. Then hold yourself accountable to prioritizing actions that will help you accomplish that vision. Say no to everything else, so you are not overwhelmed. If spending time with your kids is a priority, set aside that time and make it happen. If you want to pursue a hobby or a passion, schedule time on your calendar and do not cancel. It is about intentional prioritization.

How have you learned to navigate work/life presence? #leadership #worklifebalance

Dear Leaders,

Today, I want to talk about prioritizing your time. We get pulled in many different directions as leaders. Between meetings, presentations, and emails, it often feels like there are never enough hours in the day. That’s why great leaders are intentional about where they spend their time and what they say ‘yes’ to. Even more important is saying “no”.

At HubSpot, we like to say that ‘fortune favors the focused’. We need to focus our time and energy on a small set of priorities to drive real impact. The same is true for leaders. We need to manage our time so that we’re optimizing for impact.

I want to share actionable advice for how to do this in practice. How you manage your time is personal and what works for one person may not work for another. This is what has worked for me, and I’d love to hear your advice in the comments below.

First, define long-term goals and prioritize your time to accomplish them. A lot can change on a weekly or monthly basis, so I focus on where I want to be three years from now. I have clear goals that I keep front and center both professionally and personally. At work, I want to be the CEO HubSpot deserves, drive excellent execution, put our customers first, and advocate for underrepresented leaders. At home, given I have just a few more years before my teens go to college, I want to be present as a mom and at the same prioritize my wellness. So, I allocate my time to drive those priorities.

Ask yourself these questions: What does success look like for you three years from now, personally and professionally? Then work backwards to optimize your time to match those priorities.

Next, hold yourself accountable. If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it - and that includes your time. I look at where I spend my time on a weekly and monthly basis and even have a color coded calendar that gives me a sense of my day.

I try to organize my days based on focus areas. Monday is dedicated to exec leadership and spending time with our management team. Tuesday is ‘across the biz’ so I’m listening and learning where we can execute more effectively. Wednesday is dedicated to customers and partners, Thursday is for making progress on our strategic priorities, and Friday is for recruiting, reading and deep thinking. This isn’t a perfect science; meetings get moved and things come up. But having a clear system gives me confidence to say “no” to things that don't fit within my priorities.

Find a system that works for you - maybe you don’t live by your calendar and prefer a task list. What’s important is that you have a method for organizing your time based on long-term goals. Take stock every few months of what’s working and what’s not, and where you may need to adjust your time.

I’d love to hear what’s worked for you. How do you prioritize and optimize your time as a leader?

#leadership #timemanagement #prioritization #leadership

Exciting news! HubSpot has entered an agreement to acquire Clearbit!

Great data + powerful A.I + connected customer platform will mean game changing results for customers. And, our vision is to deliver exactly that. Today, we pull in data from marketing emails, sales calls, support tickets, website interactions, and more. We unify all that data on a beautiful, simple, customer record. This is arguably the biggest advantage with HubSpot. With Clearbit, we will be able to bring in even more external data that can help our customers connect better with their end customers.

I’m personally excited to work with Matt Sornson and the Clearbit team; they share our vision and commitment to solving for the customer. Together, we will build something amazing for customers.

Learn more about the announcement below:

https://lnkd.in/gJFif6bC

We wrapped up our Q4 all-hands company meeting at HubSpot, and I feel more energized than ever to be a part of our organization.

Despite the challenges and constant change of 2021, HubSpot has had a breakout year. We surpassed $1B in annual recurring revenue earlier this year, grew our hybrid company to over 5,500 employees, and expanded our customer base to over 128k businesses globally.

Extraordinary results like this simply aren’t possible without our employees -- extraordinary years are made of extraordinary teams. Our team met this year with alignment on mission, empathy for customers and passion for innovation!

But with great growth comes great responsibility. As a leadership team and as a company, we have a responsibility to deeply listen to our customers and employees!

That’s why our focus for 2022 is not only for HubSpot to grow as an organization, but for us to grow sustainably. Beyond our existing initiatives to battle burn-out long-term, we are building an operating system that makes rest a priority, provides constant clarity on our vision, and gives employees the resources they need to be successful at scale.

Thank you to all of our employees, customers, and partners who have made 2021 a remarkable year against all odds. And, thank you to Chris Hogan, Stephanie Cuthbertson, Kate Bueker, and Katie Burke for driving clarity and your great presentations during the meeting.

I hope everyone gets to rest and recharge over the holidays so that we can come back stronger, and more energized in the new year.

#extraordinarypeople

Dear Leaders,

I want to share with you some thoughts on how to set a vision and bring your team and organization along the journey with you.

As leaders, we are expected to set a clear vision. Our teams and organizations look to us to understand what the future holds. So, how do we set vision in a way that empowers and enrolls our teams? There is a clear distinction between enrolling people in your vision and selling people on your vision. Great leaders choose enrollment, and I want to share why.

Selling people on a vision is about making them see it your way. It puts pressure on them to agree with you and not challenge the status quo. As you can imagine, this approach not only stifles creativity and innovation, but it can also hurt psychological safety within your team.

On the other hand, enrollment is about bringing people along and seeing it their way. It’s about opening up a dialogue about your vision, not talking at people about it. By creating space for your team to discuss and reflect, they’ll feel more ownership over the vision and be able to see the individual impact they can have on executing it.

To make enrollment a reality, you need to give up a few things as a leader. 
You have to give up being right. 
You have to give up fixing everything yourself. 
You have to give up relying on authority to get things done. 
And most importantly, you have to give up your inability to hear ‘no’.

When you give these things up, though, you’ll find you gain a few things. 
You gain trust. 
You gain new perspectives and ways of looking at the world. 
You gain the ability to write the future with a group of talented people. 
And, you make work more fun, rewarding, and empowering for your team.

That’s why enrollment is what we should strive for as leaders. It creates richer teams, cultures, and vision. I am always trying to improve and get better at enrolling employees and our leaders in our company’s vision. I’d love to hear how you bring your team along on your strategic vision.

What’s worked for you? What hasn’t?

#leadership #vision #team

Dear Leaders,

I get a number of questions about career growth and they go something like this: “How did you grow in your career? Did you know you wanted to be in the C-Suite and if so, what did you do to get there?” While I didn’t start out with an aspiration to be in the C-Suite, I have learned a few lessons.

Specifically, I want to share how my career has grown by optimizing for Customer > Company > Team > Self.

Early in my career, I optimized for my team’s success (Team > Self). I was working in Sales and Operations, and I thought about career growth as getting bigger roles based on my team’s success. How could I go from Director to VP to SVP to EVP? I was squarely focused on my team’s performance and becoming a functional expert. I believe that was the right focus for that stage in my career.

Then, a bit later in my journey, I learned that I could differentiate myself by building credibility and trust cross-functionally. My ability to connect the dots across the company and to help other teams be successful had a big impact. I started optimizing for the company and for our customers, instead of my team. When I was tapped for my first C-Suite role as CCO, it wasn’t just because I was good at my function. It was because I had gained context, credibility, and trust across functions.

The CCO role - let alone the CEO role - was never part of my plan. But an invisible career path opened up as I focused more on the company and customer, than on my team or myself. I learned that, as you grow in your career, you need deep functional expertise while also being able to connect the dots across topics and teams. That is what will differentiate you and make you a potential successor for executive roles.

So my advice is to focus on what is most valuable for the company - think about the toughest problems you can solve for the company and help solve them. Find the best ways to connect the dots across teams to make your company successful. As we like to say at HubSpot: Customer > Company > Team > Self. Following that principle can open up an invisible path and create new opportunities for you to learn and grow as a leader.

What advice would you share about becoming a leader?

#leadership #leadershipadvice #careergrowth