In this edition:
- Thursday Thoughts – Take Ownership Before You’re Asked
- Weekly Top 5 – Don’t Be Evil, EA/Chief of Staff Partnership Webinar, GoMacro Bars, How EAs Manage Heavy Workloads, & The Agency Matrix
- Language of Business Series – Strategy & Decision Making
- Reading Recommendations – The Infinite Game, You Are an IP Company, & Your Next Five Moves
THURSDAY THOUGHTS
What are you ready to take ownership of that you may have been waiting for someone else to give you permission to own?
There’s a funny thing that happens when you’re really good at supporting someone else. Or when you allow someone else’s goals to come before your own.
You get used to waiting.
Waiting for direction. Waiting for approval. Waiting to be invited into the conversation. Waiting for someone to officially tell you: “This is yours now,” or “Okay, now it’s your turn.”
But at some point, growth requires you to stop waiting for permission and start taking ownership.
Maybe it’s a meeting you know you should be running. A decision you’re capable of making. A relationship you could be managing. A problem everyone keeps talking about that you could just… solve. A project you’ve been wanting to lead.
No, this doesn’t mean going rogue. But it does mean recognizing when you already have enough context, credibility, and capability to step forward. I bet you have a lot more than you give yourself credit for!
What if the next level of your growth just requires you to own something before anyone thinks to ask?
So, I’ll leave you with this question again: What are you ready to take ownership of that you may have been waiting for someone else to give you permission to own?
WEEKLY TOP 5
- “Don’t be evil” may have been Google’s former motto and a phrase used in their corporate code of conduct, but it’s taken on a whole new meaning with Claire Stapleton’s book, Don’t Be Evil: Bad Bosses, Fake Promises, and My Escape from Big Tech. Claire spent 12 years working at Google and this memoir takes us on her journey from “Bard of Google” to organizing the 20,000-employee Google Walkout. If you’re a fan of corporate insider stories, be sure to check this one out.
- Are you part of an Executive Assistant/Chief of Staff team? Then you know just how important it is to have clear communication, prioritization alignment, and a relationship rooted in partnership. Who Owns What? EAs and Chiefs of Staff Drawing the Line on September 30, hosted by Chief of Staff Network and eaMAFIA, brings together two EAs and two Chiefs of Staff to talk about what a successful partnership actually looks like day to day, across different company stages and industries. Register for free today!
- If you’re anything like me, you aren’t a fan of breakfast, you like an afternoon snack, and/or you’re running on 60 seconds or less between calls and meetings. Which is why I’m always looking for high(ish) protein bars with high-quality (and as natural as possible) ingredients. GoMacro MacroBars are my current fav – especially the Maple Sea Salt and Oatmeal Chocolate Chip. Enjoy!
- In this episode, Executive Assistants Annie, Hannah, and Christina share their top strategies for managing heavy workloads and prioritizing tasks with Nicky Christmas, Founder of The EA Campus. Annie emphasizes the importance of lists, color-coding, and the Pomodoro technique, while Hannah discusses the significance of structuring her day according to different time zones and using annual planning. Christina adds insight into leveraging technology and automation to handle repetitive tasks efficiently. Together, they provide valuable tips and techniques to help streamline work and stay productive in a demanding role.
- When everything feels important, where should you actually spend your time and energy? The Agency Matrix offers a simple way to decide: Ask, Act, Accept, or Automate based on how important something is and how much control you have over it. For Force Multipliers, it’s a useful filter for both your own work and your Executive’s. What requires action? Where do we need help? What do we simply need to accept? And what are we still spending precious time on that could be automated? Adapting isn’t about doing more, but rather about getting better at knowing what deserves your attention in the first place.
LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS SERIES – STRATEGY & DECISION MAKING
- Before Rolling Out a New Strategy, Assess Your Team’s Readiness [Harvard Business Review] – Before launching a major initiative, leaders should assess their organization’s strategic readiness across three dimensions: appetite (whether people genuinely own the outcome), capacity (whether the organization has the focus and bandwidth to sustain the work), and skillset (whether people have the capabilities the work requires).
- How Emotionally Intelligent People Use the 10-10-10 Rule to Stop Being Impulsive and Make Smarter, Better Decisions [Inc. Magazine] – Check out this simple framework of three questions to gain a new perspective when you (and your leader/company) need it most.
- See the Room: How Decisions Actually Get Made [Chief of Staff Network] – Decisions move faster than ever. AI adoption is overwhelming. The building of agents never stops. And none of it is really a technical problem: it is a leadership challenge, and Chiefs of Staff are the ones operating it every day. Join this hands-on session for Chiefs on Staff on Tuesday October 6.
- How Executive Assistants and Chiefs of Staff Can Help Their Executive Overcome Decision Fatigue [FFM] – Decision fatigue is the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision-making. And what do Executives do all day? They make decisions. Executive Assistants and Chiefs of Staff can have a major impact on their Executive’s decision-making capabilities, thus impacting the entire organization. Click on the link to learn how Force Multipliers can help their leader overcome decision fatigue.
READING RECOMMENDATIONS
- You Are An IP Company: The 12-Step Plan to Increase Your Intellectual Property, Influence, and Income by Kary Oberbrunner & Katherine Rubino, Esq. | In You Are an IP Company, the authors reveal the proven system used by leading brands to locate, protect, and monetize their most valuable asset—intellectual property. From trademarks and copyrights to patents, trade secrets, licensing, and brand assets, the smartest leaders safeguard their IP because that protection generates success. Your ideas are powerful. It’s time to protect them—and profit from them—like an IP company.
- The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek | How do we win a game that has no end? Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers—only ahead and behind. The question is, how do we play to succeed in the game we’re in? Leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead us into the future.
- Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy by Patrick Bet-David | Both successful entrepreneurs and chess grandmasters have the vision to look at the pieces in front of them and anticipate their next five moves. In this book, Patrick Bet-David “helps entrepreneurs understand exactly what they need to do next” (Brian Tracy, author of Eat That Frog!) by translating this skill into a valuable methodology. Whether you feel like you’ve hit a wall, lost your fire, or are looking for innovative strategies to take your business to the next level, Your Next Five Moves has the answers.
“There is no decision that we can make that doesn’t come with some sort of balance or sacrifice.”
Simon Sinek
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