Leadership Wise

A Few Things Up Front

Hi! I'm John. I work as the chief product officer (CPO) at one of those tech unicorns you're always reading about called Podium. As far as unicorns go, we're pretty grounded. We're based in Utah, not Silicon Valley. Better skiing, worse cocktails.

We build software to help local businesses run their front office: things such as finding leads, talking with customers, collecting payment, marketing, and getting feedback. I'm in charge of making sure we build the right software. I'm paid to make good decisions (that's important…we'll get to that).

At Podium, we do regular training for all our managers. We found that oftentimes when things went awry, it wasn't a problem with the folks on the ground. No, they were often just “following orders.” But somewhere in that managerial chain of the telephone game, things had gotten wonky. And while our managers were super smart, hardworking folks, many of them hadn't managed before, and they just needed some help being more effective. Hence, we implemented regular manager training. I was on board!

That is, I was on board until someone from HR asked me to conduct one of the training sessions.

“What do I talk about?” I asked.

“Whatever you want,” they said, “perhaps your management philosophy or something topical to our values or what's going on in the business.”

I replayed in my head things I'd heard in previous manager trainings. There had been content on managing your time wisely. There'd been a bit on holding folks ...