How to Deal with an Incompetent Executive

0:00 [Music] here's the truth with these types of situations where somebody is in middle management or middle upper management and then there is somebody else who's an executive and there is a little bit of just mistrust perhaps some disdain rightly or wrongly it doesn't matter with how that person does their work and how competent or incompetent they are etc etc so this is is a very common

0:30 scenario I've been asked about this type of topic and and people tackle it in many different ways the first observation that I'll make and so now warning this is going to hurt is that there is no point asking these types of questions the reason there's no point asking these types of questions is people who ask these questions are expecting some solution but the problem is there is no solution to this if you are in middle management or if you're an

0:56 IC even if you're a senior IC and you are in such an org where there is a powerful executive who whatever incompetence that they demonstrate you cannot solve it so really the right question that should be asked but is seldom asked is how should I change myself to be able to better deal with this situation because that is the only thing you can actually do all right the challenge is most of us see ourselves as perfectly competent and we see the world

1:28 as incredibly flawed hilariously flawed and that is that pile of garbage as long as you see that as a feature as long as you see that as a beautiful statue in this amazing inside World you've created you're not going to be able to make progress the only thing you can do in these situations is somewhat mitigate the impact of that Executives incompetence or Optics Obsession and then change yourself in roughly two ways you change your view of how you do your

1:59 work and what is important in your work or you will physically change where you are working which is like adapt or get out so let's tackle each of those parts how do you mitigate the negative impact of this Optics obsessed person as a senior leader middle manager upper middle manager at the company by the way I've worked for such people so the approach I found that works is that you create two different worlds there is the

2:27 inside world and then there's the outside world the inside world is like everything within your sphere of influence this is typically the team you manage or the org you manage or the scope you manage within this Scope when you are operating as the leader as the main boss within that scope within this inside world what you want to do is you don't want to poison this inside world with whatever nonsense whatever that classic [ __ ]

2:56 umbrella right yes the [ __ ] is raining but that doesn't mean that you let this region around you have [ __ ] all over it you can act as that [ __ ] umbrella what's more specific is what happens in a real organization is there are all sorts of processes and blah blah and various things that you are subject to that everybody in your or is supposed to do so I just break those rules I just tell

3:19 my team so there is this template that everybody needs to follow to write their goals no this template makes zero sense I don't want you to do it and the managers on my team go but that's everybody's no it's doesn't make any sense we're not going to do it it's a waste of time so when we are subject to some [ __ ] planning process that doesn't mean that I'm going to make my team's planning process [ __ ] but here I'm

3:38 taking personal risk I'm taking greater accountability and not everybody wants to do that I'm taking the hard path everybody wants to take the easy path which is this is such a [ __ ] up process such a horrible planning template that we've now all been subject to oh I wish this executive were smarter and blah blah blah no you can't control any of that but you can control now most people are not willing to do that no no

4:00 no what if I get yelled at yeah that's your [ __ ] job think like an owner so are you going to do it now for some of you as I'm saying this you'll have all these excuses in your head for why you cannot do that right to which I say then I'm sorry you are just going to be the person who just gets pushed around by these incompetent Executives throughout your career and throughout your career

4:23 you'll have reasons and throughout your career you will not experience the satisfaction the sense of flow the sense of Mastery that comes from taking ownership that comes from having confidence in your Clarity of thought that comes from defending and controlling what you can actually control and yeah sometimes you'll get a partially meets expectations or does not meet expectations rating maybe you even get fired sometimes I'm not encouraging you to get fired that's your choice you decide what to do by the way that

4:54 happens very rarely most of us think we'll get fired because we didn't follow a company template I've never seen it happen right if you're getting fired that's because of 10 other reasons that are the real reasons that you're not quite competent at your job or you're an [ __ ] with everybody or whatever the reason might be but sometimes those reasons cannot be cited so then people cite the easy reasons like oh you didn't follow the company template that's never

5:16 the reason that somebody gets fired if you're competent and you didn't follow the company template I don't know of a single good company that would fire you for that reason so anyway that is what I want you to do with your inside world then there is the outside world you'll still need to play the game with the outside world this is where I asked you will need to adapt so don't adapt in your inside world but adapt for your

5:36 outside world and that's where you become the interface you give the company and this executive or whoever the basics of what they need you're still fulfilling that contract this means more work for you and again I use planning and goals as one example but this applies to pretty much anything that is imposed at the company level very few people can do this but then this is why very few people attain Mastery this is very why very few people

6:01 are truly truly High agency everybody likes to say I'm high agency but there's always a butt but my company is not oh but my executive but no high agency by definition means you [ __ ] don't care about the environment if if you tell me I'm high agency or I have the potential to be high agency but my boss doesn't let me you are basically telling me you're not a high agency person nobody wants to hear that right okay just to

6:24 recap when faced with this situation think about the inside world you control that and then be a good enough interface to the outside world which has all the [ __ ] floating around and this applies to everything prioritization blah blah anything last thing I'll share in this situation is if you happen to be in a role of some influence which means that you are highly highly competent and you are very well regarded within the company including by your CEO or

6:51 whatever the higher level leadership is within your company then you can embark on a long game to get this executive fired but that game requires a high degree of Art and as I say this some of you who might be in this situation will say well I'm not comfortable with that yeah if you're not comfortable with that you're not ready for it but yeah you can get the executive fired but the way to get the executive fired is not to go to

7:13 the CEO and say you need to fire this person especially if the CEO has hired them in the last 3 months 6 months because you are effectively telling the CEO that his or her choice was wrong and that their judgment was wrong etc etc so that is usually not the right way to do it besides this there is no other solution to this this problem [Music]