EVERY company should have a “secret generalist.” Someone who is comprehensively skilled, low ego, incredibly strategic, and who jumps in whenever and wherever needed. I used to call this a “Seal Team Member” for the CEOs I supported. This person operates with full autonomy, reports to the CEO, and will always be that one employee who bypasses all of the BS, needless meetings, and hierarchical shenanigans with the sole intent to get things done in light speed. When a CEO has an idea, it gets handed off to this person to quickly bring it to MVP. NO this is not an EA. NO this is not a Chief of Staff. This is someone who executes quickly and brings a CEO’s “shower thought” to a workable beta. My last company had a couple of these “ninjas” who, I believe, are responsible for the insane speed at which the company iterates…their trademark. They were highly trusted by the CEO, completely misunderstood by the general population, and as stealth as special ops soldiers.
Teams get too bogged down in process. Especially, in Engineering. Especially at management level. And far too many projects collect dust because the “shower thought” has to go through a whole JIRA queue to be vetted by a bunch of management, people assigned/reassigned to work on it, and having to answer a bunch of questions in weeks of meetings when you could literally hand it to someone and have them bring it to MVP in a day or two.
The CEOs who listened to me and implemented this always were ahead of the game. The ones who didn’t…well. I haven’t heard from them, either.
The above was recently posted by Phoenix Normand, and I so agree with it, I re-posted it verbatim
Hire a generalist for your CEO. Pay them well. Thank me later.
I’m usually this person as a consultant and EA. The trick actually isn’t to bypass company processes, PMO and Governance, Agile (what a misnomer if there ever was one) orgs, etc. You have to work with those organizations enough in advance to have them trust you when you want to work something in and you need to do it rapidly. When you’re doing this, you’re arriving and leaving as naturally and unremarkably, for if is an event it defeats the purpose.
Stealth is one way of doing it but I prefer total and unquestionable transparency, and I find that way takes quite a bit less energy. Still, you need that stealth skillset too because not everything is public knowledge and you’re not the right comms channel for things that can shake people up.