Manage Up to Executives
A guide for Senior Managers
Welcome to this week’s free article of Level Up: Your source for career growth solutions & community by retired Amazon Vice President, Ethan Evans. If you’d like to become a paid member, see the benefits here, and feel free to use this expense template to ask your manager.
Managing up to executives is different. They are busy, removed from the day-to-day details, and have big results to deliver.
Here's six actions you can do to manage up effectively:
1. "Be bright, be quick, be gone."
Executives have less time. Come to your conversations with them prepared with well-thought-out ideas, express them quickly and clearly, then move on.
2. Avoid bad surprises.
Managing up before a crisis is way easier than doing it after the crisis begins. Stay on top of worrying signals and keep the executives informed.
3. Build trust before you need to rely on it.
Trust is built through consistent delivery. You will need to lean on a foundation of trust when you are trying to influence outcomes or create change. So, deliver consistently and build trust before you need it.
4. Executives cannot be in your level of detail.
Do not assume they are or get mad when they are not. Instead, give them enough detail to understand without burying them
5. As with all managing up, provide options and solutions.
Let executives know what you recommend, what you have considered, what support you need, and when you will follow up. They don't pay you to bring them problems, they pay you to solve them. If you want to stand out, answer the questions they didn't ask.
6. Do not go around your management chain.
If you absolutely must talk to an executive without your manager (e.g. Director) present, or if the executive comes to you, loop your manager in as soon as possible. It is common courtesy.
If this advice helped you and you want to go deeper on how to manage up, consider my 2-hour on-demand course, Managing Up Successfully, which gives specific steps to create effective relationships with your boss and senior peers.
How to Break Through to Executive
If you want to learn what makes a great executive, how executives are selected, and how to manage your promotion process, then enroll in my live online class that takes place September 7-8 (on the weekend so that busy leaders can make it).
I’ve promoted 8 reports from Senior Manager (Amazon L7) to Director (Amazon L8), contributed to 25+ Director promotions, hired 10+ Directors internally and externally, drove the promotion of 3 engineers to Principal, and of my former reports 2 are current Amazon VPs (L10) and 5 are C-Suite outside of Amazon.
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Note: If you’re already in executive roles (e.g. Director, Sr. Director, VP) and want to optimize performance or move up further, consider my other live online class, Cracking the C-suite 'How to Get and Master Key Executive Roles' which I co-teach with Sue Bethanis (CEO/Founder of Mariposa Leadership) who has coached 400+ tech executives.
Next cohort is October 5-6.
Sue was my best executive coach when I was an Amazon VP.
Career Talks: Executive 1:1s Using Them Well
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My 64 minute Career Talk on “Executive 1:1s Using Them Well” is particularly relevant to this article. I explain the Amazon way, executive expectations, executive 1:1s, how to use (and avoid ruining) a skip level 1:1, what a good "regular" 1:1 looks like, the manager's perspective, and answered audience Q&A (newsletter paid subscribers were invited to join this talk and ask questions live).
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Level Up is your source for career growth solutions & community by retired Amazon Vice President, Ethan Evans.
Oh yeah, I've on both sides of this table.
#2 is critical, I forget how I learned this but do not be afraid to let the Exec know things are deviating from the plan. It'd be worse when things hit the fan and are an ugly mess.
When I was the Exec this is one of the first things I asked of my managers.
For #4 check out Wes Kao's post on how to be concise. Probably not what most think, full of gold https://newsletter.weskao.com/p/how-to-be-concise?r=1elq0f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
#5 is great for your team and your kids, this is also something I asked of all my direct reports, "don't just bring me the problem, bring 2-3 solutions and your recommendation".
After a couple of tries this is how you empower them to deal with issues themselves.
Cheers.