💡 Follow the Leader (Issue 599)
And find a great job
Companies lie about culture.
Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh. Let me try again. Companies post aspirational mission statements and talk about their ideal culture, but they rarely live up to it.
Tiny companies (e.g., startups) have a chance to create and maintain a specific culture, and it’s up to the leaders to define that, hire for it, and reward the behaviors that reinforce it. But, the larger a company grows, the less this culture can be maintained. Instead, pockets of goodness exist where there are great leaders.
I tell my clients this all the time. Focus on finding a great leader. Your direct manager will determine your success and happiness in a role way more than anything else.
A great manager can create a good organization in a troubled company with a poor overall culture. I’ve experienced that! The company may be struggling and spinning out of control, but the leader creates stability amid chaos.
On the other hand, a terrible manager will make your life miserable even when the overall company is fantastic. I’ve experienced that, too. It takes a long time for a good company to push out a bad leader. Meanwhile, your career and well-being suffer.
So, how do you find the good leaders?
Guess…
Yep, sorry. You will need to talk to people. The truth—the real truth—doesn’t exist online. It is only revealed during private, confidential conversations.
Take Amy Lokey as an example. She’s the CXO at ServiceNow. I know her from our time at Yahoo. I’ve also heard great things about her as a design leader from many people. However, if I were a designer considering joining her organization, I would do a lot more research.
For example:
Search for designers who currently work at ServiceNow. I just did this and found 1,200 designers. But, Amy is a CXO, so her directs are going to be SVPs, VPs, and maybe Sr. Directors, not individual contributors. That’s a much smaller number of people to reach out to for a conversation.
Even better? Search for designers and design leaders who used to work at ServiceNow (i.e., use the Past Company filter to narrow down the People results). People who used to work at a company and used to work for a specific leader are more likely to be honest about their experiences than current employees who will be more cautious.
Finally, Amy was also a leader at Google and LinkedIn. So, search for designers who used to work at Google and LinkedIn to learn more about Amy’s leadership style and the kind of organizational culture she created in those companies.
If you have a pretty good network, you can connect with your people to get more information about a potential employer and manager. My friends and I always did this when we were looking for our next opportunities. I often had people contacting me to learn more about someone (e.g., “Do you know Susan James? What can you tell me about her leadership style? Would you recommend that I take a job working for her?”).
This is why a cold job application process is a crapshoot. You have no idea what you’re getting into! It could be a crappy company with a miserable manager. The glowing BS on the corporate website isn’t the truth.
Work your network. Do your homework. Find a great leader, and your chances of making a great career move improve dramatically.
I’m Larry Cornett, a Freedom Coach who works with you to optimize your career, business, and life. My mission is to help you become a more "Invincible You" so you can live your life on your terms instead of being controlled by someone else's rules. I live in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with my wife and our Great Dane.
