Happy Friday Dear Friend,
It’s podcast week again.
And today I am joined by Liam Boogar, the VP Marketing at Scaleway.
I met Liam years ago at a Startup Weekend in Hamburg. Back then he was the owner and publisher of the startup magazine RudeBaguette.
Since then he left his journalistic career and led the marketing teams of legendary B2B startups like MadKudu, Algolia, and 360Learning.
He built, managed and scaled several marketing teams to 20+ people.
So if you are eying a similar career path or want to get some hard-earned leadership advice, this episode is for you!
PS: I can also highly recommend his newsletter Conquering Blindspots.
Let’s get into it…
...Today's topics
🎙️ Podcast Episode #11:
Mastering The First 90 Days As A New Marketing Leader
🍔 Two Favorite Takeaways from the Episode
The two most thought-provoking ideas I took from this conversation.
🎙️ Podcast Episode #11
Mastering The First 90 Days As A New Marketing Leader
Guest: Liam Boogar
🤙 Street Cred: VP Marketing at Scaleway, previously led marketing at 360learning, MadKudu and Algolia.
👋 Follow Liam: LinkedIn | Newsletter
The Episode in Its Full Glory ✨
🍔 Two Favorite Takeaways from the Episode:
1. The First Impression Sticks. Plan Your First 90 Days In A New Job Accordingly.
There is a lasting effect that can be traced back to your first interactions, your first three months, or the first project you worked on in a new job. It kind of follows you. You somehow feel like you're always working on that first project. If you mess up early on, it's so hard to get back on track and win the trust of your leadership team.
Most companies don't have an onboarding plan for your first 90 days. It's about being proactive and about figuring out what you want to get and how you're going to reduce the 'time to value', i.e. the time it takes for you to create recognizable impact.
The book The First 90 Days is an invaluable resource with lots of frameworks to help you out on this journey.
Long story short: Make the first 90 days of your job count. Design and plan those first impressions deliberately and be proactive from day one.
2. As a Leader You Are In Charge Of A Team, Not Individuals.
It's really hard to get to a place of individual accountability without collective accountability. So if you want to develop a high-performing team you need to look at it as a group effort. Liam recommends to encourage your colleagues to give feedback on your whole team, not only individuals.
Because then you can sit down with your team on that feedback and say: "Look, this is what people have said about our team. How can we collectively change?" And after you agreed on a joint approach you go to each individual and ask: "We have agreed that we all need to change as a team. What is your role in getting us there?".
All of a sudden the team as a whole defines your success. And that shifts the way you as a leader think about people. You'll make less bets on single individuals and more bets on the collective.
Long story short: Coach your team as a unit. Get accountability as a unit. Then talk to each team member how they can contribute to that team effort.
Come join us!
That's it for this week.
Talk soon,
Sandro