The Champion Leader

Chapter 5Prioritization (Master the Art of Time Management and Strategy)

“Only having a certain number of hours in the day have really forced me to prioritize. I focused on the things that are the biggest impact.”

—Susan Wojcicki

Whether you're leading a family or an organization—or both—figuring out the balance of work and life is a challenge that every one of us faces. Long commutes, work‐from‐home routines, ensuring we're organized and our to‐do lists are ready to go—these all factor into how we tackle each day. A champion leader who has artfully navigated this balance throughout her career is former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.

Before retiring from her role as CEO in early 2023, Wojcicki became an icon of women tech leaders everywhere for her industry expertise, promotion of work‐life balance, and innovative strategies that continue to lead YouTube into a new era. She's also a mother of five children who built an incredibly successful career as a working mother. The keys to her success? Prioritizing time with her family and keeping high‐impact things at the forefront of her work.

She also played a unique role in a famous backstory.

In the late summer of 1998, she and her husband rented the garage of their Silicon Valley home to a couple of 25‐year‐old computer scientists. You may know them better as Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It was there in Wojcicki's garage that Google was born. She later became the 16th Google employee. Wojcicki played a gigantic ...