In this edition:
- Thursday Thoughts – The Strategic Pause
- Weekly Top 5 – The RISE Summit, Building a Business with a Full-Time Job, Overlooked No More Summit, Best Leadership Phrases, & Skills for Different Career Stages
- Language of Business Series – Strategy & Decision Making
- Reading Recommendations – Thinking in Bets, Blue Ocean Strategy, & How to Decide
THURSDAY THOUGHTS
Welcome to September and to a month full of strategy and decision making!
Let’s start with strategic thinking… Force Multipliers are asked to be more strategic at work, encouraged to be more strategic in order to grow their careers, and desire to be more strategic for their own leadership, but often with little guidance on how to actually make that happen.
But that’s why you’re here!
Strategic thinking is an individual’s capacity for analyzing complex situations, thinking systematically and conceptually, and making informed decisions towards the attainment of success in the future.
In other words, strategic thinking goes beyond the day-to-day tasks and focuses on understanding the bigger picture, clearly understanding context, identifying patterns and trends, identifying gaps, and thinking of solutions to navigate challenges and create new opportunities.
As an Executive Assistant or Force Multiplier, your first inclination when faced with a problem, a newly assigned task, or an upcoming project is to put your head down and get to work. This is usually the fastest way to get said item done, off your list, and on to the next task before ten more things fall on your plate. And yet, in order to grow in your role, we need to fight against our first instinct (and well-honed “get shit done” muscle) and become more strategic.
Enter The Strategic Pause.
The Strategic Pause is similar to the concept of the Buddha’s sacred pause, which refers to a moment of mindfulness and intentional reflection that allows individuals to step out of their autopilot mode, observe their thoughts and emotions, and reconnect with the present moment.
The Strategic Pause is a practice of taking a pause or break before you dive into a task or project. This pause allows you to stop just long enough to analyze, ask questions, and strategize before you start “doing”. After taking this pause you may realize you don’t actually have to do anything at all, except delegate or make an introduction to someone else!
➡ Click here to keep reading about how to take a strategic pause.
WEEKLY TOP 5
- The RISE Summit, eaMAFIA’s exclusive, members-only summit where the most ambitious EAs come to level up, is heading to New Orleans! This event features three days of curated content, intentional networking, and tactical skill-building designed for EAs supporting the most powerful leaders in tech and VC. This year’s speakers include Libby Moore (Oprah’s former Chief of Staff), Opal Vadhan (former Senior Advisor to VP Kamala Harris), Shelley Trask (EA Team Manager at Ramp), and more! Click here to join the community and get your ticket to the RISE Summit.
- Balancing a full-time job and trying to build a business? It’s not for everyone, but it can be done! And, it may actually be an advantage. These four founders explain how they used their full-time jobs to fund their startups, reduce risk, and shape smarter business decisions.
- On September 14-18 at 3pm EST, join Melody Wilding, author of Managing Up, live for Overlooked No More. This free 5-day summit will help you stop being seen as “too tactical” – and start being respected as the “next-level” contributor you are. Click here to join!
- Great leadership is all about communication (and, as we know, has nothing to do with title). Check out these 10 phrases the best leaders use (and which ones to avoid). I especially appreciate the acknowledgement that “Let me know if you need something,” isn’t very helpful – even if it is said with the best of intentions.
- Individual contributor? Manager? C-suite? Each professional stage in an organization requires a different set of skills. Jessica Goldberg explains more here. Dare I say? Force Multipliers need all four? Which one do you need to develop further to succeed in your career?
LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS SERIES – STRATEGY & DECISION MAKING
- How Elite Sports Coaches Make High-Pressure Decisions [Harvard Business Review] – Drawing on interviews with 11 elite coaches across major U.S., European, Australian, and New Zealand professional sports leagues, the authors show that high-pressure decisions aren’t a single “formula” but a set of practices that unfold before, during, and after pivotal moments—and translate directly to business leadership.
- Adam Grant 2027 Day-to-Day Calendar: Something to Think About [Amazon] – Get your day started right by opening your mind with thought-provoking insights from bestselling author and organizational psychologist Adam Grant.
- The Most Powerful Decision Making Razors [Sahil Bloom] – A razor is a rule of thumb that simplifies decision making. Razors aren’t perfect. They’re shortcuts. But used well, they can be the highest-leverage tools you carry through life. In an age of infinite information, razors can help you stop overthinking and start moving. Click on the link to check out 21 razors.
READING RECOMMENDATIONS
- Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke | Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned business consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions. By shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to a goal of accurately assessing what you know and what you don’t, you’ll be less vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and destructive habits in your decision making. You’ll become more confident, calm, compassionate and successful in the long run.
- Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne | This book argues that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves (spanning more than 100 years across 30 industries), the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors but from creating “blue oceans”—untapped new market spaces ripe for growth. Blue Ocean Strategy presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and outlines principles and tools any organization can use to create and capture their own blue oceans.
- How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices by Annie Duke | What if there was a better way to make quality decisions so you can think clearly, feel more confident, second-guess yourself less, and ultimately be more decisive and be more productive? Through interactive exercises and engaging thought experiments, this book helps you analyze key decisions you’ve made in the past and troubleshoot those you’re making in the future. Whether you’re picking investments, evaluating a job offer, or trying to figure out your romantic life, How to Decide is the key to happier outcomes and fewer regrets.
“Thinking in bets starts with recognizing that there are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck. Learning to recognize the difference between the two is what thinking in bets is all about.”
Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets
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When someone understands the language of business, they can connect their work to: revenue, profitability, growth, efficiency, risk, priorities, customer experience, organizational goals, and strategic tradeoffs. We aren’t talking about memorizing corporate jargon here! But we are talking about understanding how businesses function, what leaders care about, how decisions get made, and how work impacts the bigger picture.
For the rest of the year, each newsletter issue will focus on one key area of business fluency: financial literacy, customers & sales, marketing & brand, strategy & decision making, operations, people & organizational dynamics, and leadership.
From articles and podcasts, to book recommendations, courses and conferences, and insights and advice, we’ll dive into one key topic each month.
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