Thank you, kind words! I'm glad my advice is helpful to you!

I really appreaciate that!

Due to popular demand, the next episode…skincare with Lenny and Ethan haha!

You can't see me blushing, thank you. I am honest though - I recognize appearance matters so I good lighting and a touch of skin makeup under the eyes, courtesy of my wife. So I guess you could say my skin routine is in part recognizing that I wanted to look nice to the camera and I'm not too proud to break out the foundation 🙂

Fantastic. @mhauzeur I would love to know what you were missing?

Thanks for replying @@EthanEvansVP! Regarding the 5 steps, I think I have been implementing them for a while, but regarding the process of growth, when you start by asking how I can help you, then by identifying issues, then by identifying the issues and fixing them, etc. I am in the process of making the complete jump to just keep in the loop with my leader. I thought that keeping him in the loop was something wrong, but not, is part of the process and seniority. Now, I wonder, what comes next after keeping in the loop? Should I focus on Innovation and strategy? On the other hand, I am using your framework to apply to my team, so thanks for sharing.

Great question. I think in a case like this you do need to push back on the work, explaining that these are management tasks and inappropriate for you to do. While I think there are fewer "bad" managers than people think, they absolutely do exist, and if your manager is asking you to perform personnel tasks, then you need to go find a better manager.

As always, it depends on the connections this manager has. First, smooth it over with the fellow employee. Inform the manager's boss of the work your are doing that should be your managers role. Obviously it places a relationship strain because of titles/roles. Because of politics, your manager may not be moved. You need to develop a backup plan. Always having an exit strategy, in any business situation. I understand it feels uncomfortable, however I'm sure your Manager's Boss needs 'ammo' like this to get things changed.

Thanks for the answers. It's good to know I'm not the only one who thinks changes need to be made in these situations.

I wish you could too. Sadly, I get requests for several coffee chats per day. The way I scale my time is to do live events for my (paid) Substack newsletter subscribers. It costs a bit more than a coffee, but it gives you more access, too.

@@EthanEvansVP Thank you for responding; I certainly did not expect you to. I quickly signed up for the free version of your sub-stack today, however, I will check it out in more detail and might subscribe.

Hi Peter. Growth is absolutely helpful but is not the only way up. People leave. People are fired. In the current economy, the way I see leaders I coach growing is that their peers are laid off and they are given the pieces of teams that are left. They have hard jobs (picking up the pieces), but they get both more responsibility and somewhat more people in the changes. There is no doubt that the most fun thing is what I call "riding the elevator," where the company is growing and you ride up with that growth. But it is not the only way, and it is not one you can count on. I will say, if you find yourself at what I call "the post office," which is a place where no one ever leaves and there is very little movement, all based on tenure, then it is very hard. Your best option there is switch companies.

Thank you Ethan! I just left such a post office a few months ago.

Thanks for the tip, will look into him.

Mark, I actually agree with you. The challenge is that there is no great agreed measurement of inventiveness. We have things like the SAT for math and writing, and the GPA for college performance, but I am unaware of an easy metric for invention. Thus, I used the best proxy that is available. What I can tell you is that I had more patents than most people at Amazon, often 10x more. There were also a few people with more than me. Those people had access to the same resources; a few of them did more, most did less, at least on this one dimension.

When you develop an idea while working at a company, doesn't the employer gain the rights to it? How do you create and have ownership over 70 patents then?