101 Leadership and Life Lessons for My 11-Year-Old Self

1. Be obsessed with customer problems.

“You need to get to the future, ahead of your customers, and be ready to greet them when they arrive.”

This quote from Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, is one of the best I’ve come across on this topic. It all starts and ends with the customer, indeed.

Today’s leaders need to know how to identify and translate customer problems.

Great leaders listen intently and let customers articulate their problems in context and their own words. They rely on their product teams to apply such customer–centricity during product discovery and execution. They keep driving decisions with the customer’s and the company’s best interests in mind. It’s the only way to build products that will delight your customers while making economic sense for the company.

Such customer orientation is an absolute must for any business leader to succeed. Of course, most CEOs focus on the customer, but the ones with a product management mindset go the extra mile. They build intimacy with what’s on their customers’ minds. They anticipate what will delight them once the right solution is there.

2. Be authentic and engage.

In many companies, managers now hold the key to establishing more authentic leadership. They’re reaping the associated benefits of more engaged teams:

• It all starts with truly understanding what’s motivating their team members and using this knowledge as the base for their proposals.

• They know how to persuade team members by embedding their arguments in compelling stories that speak to their audiences.

• As importantly, they’re not operating in a vacuum and don’t fear the positive confrontation of ideas. They’re not superheroes who get it right all the time. They need forums to exchange and build from there.

• To enable such forums, they nurture learning communities. All participants safely exchange and enrich the pool of ideas.

• Teams value the sharing of critiques and challenges with their leaders. It’s the foundation for inventing and generating more impactful solutions that people can relate to.

Although not pervasive, authentic leadership is picking up in the corporate world, and the movement keeps growing because everyone wins: goals are clear, teams are engaged, and results are strong.

3. Put real effort into your best vision and mission.

As a leader, you have the moral obligation to drive the vision for your business. In other words, where the company is heading on a time horizon. To illustrate what a great vision and mission can be, let me use Tesla’s example:

Tesla’s Mission

“To create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles.”

Tesla’s Vision

“To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”

Their mission clearly states Tesla’s focus. How they want to compare with others, and what their timeframe is. It’s bold yet credible.

Their vision is taking it to the next level and is quite inspirational. It reveals that Tesla is much more than another car company. They want to bring their expertise in sustainable energy to more domains to make a more profound impact.

A solid mission and vision are undoubtedly the best foundation for a great business.

4. Learn from failure and build resilience.

For a while, experts have been arguing about how necessary planning is. My take is that it’s worth it. Despite the pain, the alignment you gain from planning is priceless. But planning needs to come with the ability to monitor execution continuously and timely revise the plan if the results are not the expected ones.

Resilience is about progressing on your goals even if things do not go as planned.

I’ve seen the most resilient teams sticking to their vision even when things repeatedly didn’t go as planned. The past, for them, was more guidance than resentment. The team’s experience from a series of failures was helpful when making bold, decisive moves came.

Here are a few of the fundamental principles we kept top of mind when things didn’t go the way they should:

• It takes a LOT of minor setbacks to influence the big picture.
• Failure is OK. Own it, learn from it and expand from there.
• When trouble looms, make sure you ask for help and seek advice.

And by the way, the question is not whether we’ll fail or not, but more about how we will approach failure and what we’ll learn from it. Failure is an opportunity to learn, progress, and improve.

5. Don’t wait for others to create meaning for yourself.

Some might argue that life has a meaning that is superior to what humans can even comprehend. 

Possibly, but with my business hat on, let me respectfully disagree. 

We, humans, invented that concept of meaning. And that’s great news! Instead of wishing that mother nature or others will bring you meaning on a silver plate, you can build it for yourself.

The secret to creating more meaning for yourself is to move out of “auto-pilot” mode and be fully present and mindful.

It can be as easy as picking a few minutes in your day and try to experience them as if they were totally new. Usually when doing something for the first time, we’re quite present and engaged. By fully living the moment and being 100% present, you’ll notice things you didn’t when you were on auto-pilot. 

You’ll capture ideas and opportunities you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. They all add up to creating purpose and more meaning that you can actually control.

6. Have an exponential mindset.

We live in a world of exponential evolutions. Look around you; everything is accelerating. Yet, the way most of us keep thinking is still very linear. Such incremental thinking is what’s causing us to get blindsided eventually. 

An exponential mindset will help you anticipate accelerating mutations and ease the transition from one paradigm to the next. As Mark Bonchek highlighted in a 2016 HBR article on this topic:

 “The incremental mindset focuses on making something better, while the exponential mindset is makes something different.”

One way to get started with it is to assume that what took five years to happen will now only take one year. So, look at your market or category, imagine the consequences of such acceleration, and what impact it would have on your plans.

7. Balance big audacious goals with Zen.

Let me share what I found works for me:

I make a point always to have one impossible goal going on. Big plans stimulate my creative and critical thinking. Not only do they get my adrenaline up, but they are extremely rewarding, too, even if I fail.

I’m liberal with goal planning and continuously consider my options. There is such a thing as a Plan B, and it will likely” lead you to Rome too.” So I make sure I consider different scenarios and regularly assess the state of progress against the goals. Course correction is always acceptable – actually, the earlier, the better.

I balance my impossible goal with periods of absolute randomness. I can spend hours with no predetermined objective. Letting my mind and body wander and doing just what I love. It’s where I make my best discoveries.

Being only bold-goal-driven would make me a terrible person. But I also know that becoming 100% Zen is impractical. 

By applying these balancing principles, you can start to integrate better two radically complementary approaches to life: goal-driven vs. Zen. 

You’ll get the excitement of working towards outstanding achievements while enjoying the beauty of this world – yes, there is some! – whatever path you take, wherever you end up.

8. Demonstrate humaneness and courage.

I have found the best way to assess where you stand on these two core values is to reflect and ask yourself the following questions:

• How good are you at demonstrating respect for those you interact with? Don’t limit this to your team. Think of peers and even competitors- adversaries.
• How much confidence and decisiveness are you projecting in the face of adversity and challenges? 
• How well are you mobilizing teams despite mounting pressure in times of changes and uncertainty?

With practice, you build courage by stopping creating issues that don’t exist. You realize the present inconvenience will pass and get sorted out. Here’s how I have progressed there:

• First, I’m training my mind to recognize when uncertainty hits. I avoid jumping to conclusions (positive or negative, as I highlighted above).
• Second, I’m consciously accepting the situation without losing my nerves. It’s here, and that’s a fact.
• Third, I’m trying to establish a state of non-resistance. Good or bad, reality can’t be undone, and resisting it will not help. Of course, if someone is stepping on my toes, I should defend myself. But accepting it has occurred will drive a better answer.

9. “Humility” is your magic sauce.

To help your team get to the right level of critical thinking and have them truly solve the problems at hand, you need to create the right kind of culture and environment. That’s where some form of humility comes into play.

I don’t mean you should have a “low opinion” of yourself. Instead, make it clear to others that you don’t have all the answers. Recognize the expertise where it is and invite team members to engage in problem resolution with the same mindset. The expertise that lies in your teams is your goldmine. That’s how you can solve the most challenging problems. So, make sure you leverage the collective brainpower.

Interestingly, such humility can co-exist with very different leadership styles and personalities. A fascinating combination is probably Steve Jobs 2.0 (after getting fired the first time from Apple). It shows that ‘humble narcissists ‘can become the best business leaders. Despite his “aggressive” style, Steve Jobs clearly understood the power of the team. 

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people”. Steve Jobs

10. Be constantly willing to improve.

The best leaders never stop learning! Your worst enemy is complacency. 

No matter how overwhelming or painful it can be, you should genuinely try to understand people and situations by asking practical probing questions to get to the bottom. 

Along these lines, the best leader is never afraid of asking for help to ensure continuous progress.

This quest for improvement also comes with a structure of habits carefully built. Routines and rituals define us. We are what we do! I know I’m a runner, an author, a Sherpa because that’s what I’m doing – almost – every day. I “just” Do It!

11. Be optimistic yet selective.

Even in the most screwed situations, seeing some good can be a life savior. It helps you persevere and reach your untapped potential. 

As you try to identify these upsides, you’ll become better at solving problems and reap greater rewards than most.

A lot is going out of control around us, however. So, the key to keeping your sanity and maximizing impact is to focus on what you can control and learn to be indifferent to the rest.

Selectiveness in such a noisy world was the hardest for me in 2021. Yet, I’ve kept progressing by limiting my exposure to social media and general news and seeking more targeted insights.

I’ve made the best out of the past year, choosing problems to address and taking a bold and positive approach to their resolution. 

12. Be an unconditional giver.

We’re all used to seeing negotiations and give-and-take in our relationships at work. Yet, the best leaders know they’re demonstrating formidable strength by giving without expecting anything in return.

So start by giving more than you take. Share with others. Give them your time, your thoughts—no need to be the smartest in the room. Just kindly and genuinely share. Good things will come from it.

Such an unconditional approach might be unsettling initially for those who are used to constant negotiations. Still, it is the key to building the most robust relationship and winning allies for life.

13. Establish vulnerability-based trust.

A dear German friend introduced me to the work of one of the best experts in the field, Brené Brown. She further associates vulnerability with courage and, therefore, the ability to lead.

Brené Brown recognizes that vulnerability can be uncomfortable, and it takes courage to expose yourself. Still, leaders need to “create a culture where discomfort is normal.” When things become edgy, you’re doing what you need to be doing.

Showing vulnerability is first about investigating and accepting imperfection. You’re willing to own your mistakes and ready to handle criticism. You’re also refusing the conformity that still prevails in the workplace.

As such, when you’re willing to show vulnerability, failure becomes an option. With it, you are opening the door to innovation and outstanding outcomes.

Along these lines, you must be unequivocally clear that anyone’s shortcomings, fears, and failures won’t be used against them.

It has to be mutual. It can feel very uncomfortable, but that’s the only way to build genuine trust.

14. Don’t be a victim, ever.

This one saved me more than once. I learned to take responsibility for everything that happened to me at work – and in my personal life.

It’s been hard, especially when I perceived some decisions or events as unfair. Yet, I never resorted to blaming or being a victim. Instead, I focused on shaping my reality and forging my destiny.

15. Meet new people, experience more places.

The pandemic threw a monkey wrench into many of our travel plans and dreams of exotic destinations. Yet, even in a more virtual way, 2020 was one of the richest years I’ve had when it came to meeting new people. As for physical activity, be deliberate about it, and it will soon become second nature.

I always keep my dog in mind when I’m about to meet new people. Romeo is an adorable little Boston Terrier who expects magic in every encounter. Although it doesn’t always end up that magical, sometimes it does, and it pays off.

Meeting new people and discovering new places have increased empathy, emotional intelligence, and creative thinking. If you want to find the interesting side of others and get something valuable from them, don’t be afraid to engage with them and ask open-ended questions. Chances are you’ll capture someone’s frame of mind, dig deeper and learn a lot.

So, build the habit of reaching out, making new connections, and reconnecting with your network. 

Meet at least one new person, rekindle with two people in your network and go to one new place weekly. It doesn’t have to be far. You can keep exploring your district, your city, your county.

16. Forge strong discipline.

The following questions can help you gauge better where you stand with discipline:

• How strongly are you preparing your teams to address unknown and uncertainties?
• What are you ensuring to adequately reward your best players?
• How clearly are you articulating the consequences of poor performance?

17. Step back, reflect, and think.

You don’t need a therapist to do so. You don’t even need to adopt fancy techniques of meditation. Just spend “me” time with your thoughts and dig into what you haven’t fully processed yet.

A trigger might help, like reading a book, watching a movie, listening to a song, or meeting that old friend or previous colleague.

But once you develop your mental clarity, you better understand where you are going. You also add meaning to your actions and your work.

So if you want to be at the top of your game, ensure you’re not just spending all your energy on sole productivity. 

18. Know how to apologize.

Here’s some real-life experience that you might find helpful:

A few years ago, I was the General Manager of a business unit developing audio software. We had just done a gate review, where all the indicators the team had communicated were green.

My boss, the Sr executive VP, was quite pleased with the status, and we moved into the next development stage. He happily shared this outcome with the rest of the executive team.

The next day, my engineering leader came to me, extremely embarrassed. He shared a batch of unsolved issues, a.k.a. bugs, that fell through the cracks. The status was not green; it was purple red!

I shared my disappointment but also apologized to the team. After all, if our process didn’t catch such issues, there was a flaw. A flaw that I – as the leader – carried some responsibility for. We needed to deconstruct the process and fix it for good.

In addition, and importantly, I asked for an immediate plan of action to mitigate the situation of the newly discovered bugs. The team worked on it at night and gave me their analysis and proposed action plan that we reviewed first thing in the morning. 

At that stage, I had enough elements to go and break the news and what we were doing about it to my boss. Guess what I did?

I reached out to him. Then, I apologized for the oversight. I made NO excuse, expressing we would get to the bottom of the process flaw to fix it for good. Finally, I shared the immediate mitigation plan to address the newly-found bugs.

It didn’t go very well. At first, my boss felt betrayed and quite disappointed. But eventually, after some time, he acknowledged that our approach was demonstrating drive and ownership. He even thanked me for my leadership on this.

The moral of this story?

Of course, don’t fail too often, and don’t over apologize! But the next time things don’t go as planned, make sure you own the problem, discover its roots, and drive its resolution.

19. Focus on sustainability.

Here are a few approaches you can take, from the most practical to the visionary ones:

• Eliminate plastics and other non-sustainable materials from your product and packaging – as much as possible. If you can’t avoid plastics, work on using post-consumer recycled plastic, not virgin materials, and avoid single-use plastics.
• Think smaller in how you design your products’ inner parts and focus on a smaller footprint. Every component counts: from electronic circuit boards to screws, magnets, and accessories.
• Focus on renewable energies for each part of your operations. Look at ways you can influence the shift away from fossil energies in your factories or offices. It’s trickier for your supply chain, so focus on which transportation will be the least impactful. For example, do you need to expedite with airfreight, or can it come on a slow boat from China?
• Participate in reforestation and afforestation projects. It is a longer-term shot, but you don’t need to create it all from scratch. Your company can join existing initiatives that already have a proven impact. Just Google it! You’ll be amazed at how many projects are at your fingertips.

These are just a few ideas to get the ball rolling. Future generations will thank you for that! Keep it going.

20. Slow down to avoid burnout.

Here’s a little experiment I recently did that can shed some light on how to adjust your speed best:

I’m running the same 7-mile route along the coast in Santa Cruz two to three times a week. In the beginning, I used to push as hard as possible, all the way down. I arrived exhausted and out of breath, and it would take me forever to recover. My time was about 55 minutes. 

Soon enough, I wasn’t enjoying that run anymore, so I decided to take it easy. I mentally set my pace at half the normal one. The run was pure joy. I rediscovered all the beauty of the East Cliff shoreline. I arrived fresh and relaxed. Want to guess my time? 57 minutes!

You read it right! 

A minor adjustment in your execution speed can make a difference in the quality of your perceived experience.

So, whether it’s in business or personal, make sure you experiment too. Adjust your execution speed, don’t take on more than you can chew, and find your happy “pace”!

21. Let go of perfectionism.

It is an important nuance between many founders and CEOs. Most founders are typical overachievers and tend to be perfectionists. But perfectionism and extensive responsibilities don’t do well together.

If you wish to be a successful leader, let go of your involvement in all the tiny details. Strive for cohesion and mutual trust. 

Perfectionism is the enemy. Excellence is the goal.

22. Get ready for the unexpected.

When you prepare for the Antarctica Marathon, you focus your training on adapting to cold environments with extreme and sudden changes in conditions. With the mild Californian winters, it wasn’t easy for me, but I got as ready as possible.

After an epic couple of tumultuous days in the Drake passage from Argentina, we eventually hit Antarctica. Given the limitations, less than 100 visitors could be on land simultaneously. The Vavilov and Ioffe expedition boats were following each other for a day. We were on the Ioffe. 

The Vavilov team went first for the Marathon: temperatures in the ’20s (Fahrenheit), gusty winds, hail, and snow. These were pretty typical conditions, and several runners suffered from hypothermia. Some even were not able to finish.

I woke up on the Ioffe expedition boat the following day, mentally prepared for a tough day. I was pleasantly surprised to see the sunny skies and calm seas. The ice on the ground was probably the only sign it had been quite cold that night.

The course was a four-loop path (you don’t do point-to-point in Antarctica if you want your runners to finish alive!). The weather proved to be remarkably mild and bearable in the ’30s. But, after a couple of loops, I noted the deterioration of the road conditions as the ice started to melt. 

I would have never expected it under these latitudes: we were glued into fields of thick mud. One of my shoes even entirely disappeared in the sucking brown mass. It took all of us longer to finish. Yet, we invented new ways of running on our heels and even took an extended cut to avoid the deepest mud areas altogether.

Bad stuff tends to come in the most unexpected ways. No matter how great your planning is, you must build agility in your execution to prevail. Creative thinking and improvisation do best when coupled with solid planning. 

23. Nothing is static, you can invent the future.

“We’ll never succeed unless we continue to open up new vistas.” Chuck Geschke – 2008

Chuck Geschke and John Warnock founded Adobe in 1982. They could not imagine they would someday receive the National Medal of Technology from the very hands of President Barack Obama. But they did! Twenty-seven years later. After almost three decades of continuous invention, Adobe had become a major tech player. 

Earlier, the duo had spent years at Xerox Park, researching graphics and image processing areas. Together, they developed a promising page description language (PDL), but their management wasn’t into a bold implementation of the idea. So, the two left Xerox to start their own company, Adobe. Their first product was Adobe PostScript, an innovative computing language sold to printer manufacturers. PostScript provided a radical new way to print text and images on paper. It also sparked the desktop publishing revolution, transforming the professional printing and publishing industry in just a few years. Soon, Adobe diversified into more applications. Some even became a “verb,” like Photoshop. I’m sure you know most of them by name.

In my opinion, the most transformative invention Chuck and John enabled remains Acrobat PDF (Portable Document Format). I participated in the European launch of Acrobat in June 1993 in London. We didn’t know it yet, but we had pure gold in our hands. Acrobat would soon become the absolute reference for universal rich documents you can share on any device, any platform.

24. Be disruptive yet patient.

Still, in the Adobe example, Chuck Geschke knew how to leverage opportunities. He practiced it during the early days at Adobe. The company had successfully developed its PostScript language. It soon became apparent that PostScript had a unique way of handling typefaces.

The only caveat was that the leaders in the typeface industry were very traditional and entrenched. As Chuck and the Adobe team kept hearing “no” from the typeface industry leaders, they soon became experts in going to their hungry competitors. They secured great deals and eventually disrupted the whole category.

When we launched the first version of Acrobat in 1993, we had a particular niche market in mind. We thought it would primarily benefit professional publishers and their clients as digital proof before going to press. We even sold the PDF Reader for $50! Understandably, initial sales were slow, and the technology was not going anywhere. Acrobat was probably out in the market three years too soon. But then the Internet took off. After much debate, Chuck and John decided we would distribute the PDF reader for free.

With the emergence of the Web, PDF became mainstream and became the standard for distributing rich electronic documents. It didn’t contribute much to the financial bottom line at first. Some teams in charge of the high-revenue applications and systems even highly criticized why we’d keep such a money-losing solution. But the perseverance and continued investment eventually paid off, and Acrobat was a pivotal contributor to Adobe’s $15B revenue in 2021.

25. Always keep an open mind.

On a personal note, I experienced the truly open mind that characterized Chuck Geschke at Adobe. It was back in early 1994. I had met Chuck only once at that time, but he already knew who I was and what was driving me. 

We had just announced our intent to acquire one of our competitors, Aldus. I was in charge of the Iberica market in my twenties and probably too excited by the acquisition prospect. I regularly talked to the Spanish press and shared more than I should have about plans.

My enthusiasm endangered the deal at a critical juncture and slowed the negotiations. Many executives would have used the opportunity to fire me. Chuck didn’t. He backed me up, believed in my potential, and trusted I wouldn’t make the same mistake again. By doing so, he and Adobe got the best out of me for the next ten years. 

At some point, everyone in your team will fail. What makes the difference is how you, as a leader, react to it and help them learn and rebound.

26. Become a lifelong learner.

The daily whirlwind of corporate life can be challenging for any leader, and you’ll soon find yourself putting out fires all day long.

You will regress if you don’t step back with a deliberate effort to learn something new every day. That’s a fact of life.

You might not experience the higher cognitive decline rate older adults face. Still, you’d better make mental acuity a key priority. Numerous psychological studies have proven that learning new skills is the best way to go about it.

So don’t wait for your HR organization to build the perfect learning plan for you as a leader. Be proactive and dive into it! It has never been more accessible these days. The pandemic eliminated commutes (for now) and triggered new behaviors that are here to stay. We have traded many “busy” time for “quality” time. Spend some of it with your loved ones, but make sure you keep a portion for learning too! Online learning quality is still, but new best-in-class experiences are emerging and leverage the power of communities.

On that point, I recently participated in a Product Strategy Sprint online training offered by Section 4, Scott Gallaway’s latest venture. This fast-paced two-week online program gave me much hope that education is going toward the correct transformation. It struck the perfect balance between lecturing, break-out rooms, workshops, time for practice, and a final report. 

Check it out. I trust more education programs will start to follow this path!

27. Stay physically active.

By now, we all know the correct dose of physical activity is essential at every stage in life. So don’t wait until you’re retired to establish a rock-solid routine! It will pave the way for stronger mental and physical health.

The essential notion here is “routine.” I typically handle my physical activities like any critical meeting to make sure they stick.

I’m diligent about marking my calendar with daily exercises. It means blocking times in my work calendar where I specifically call the name of the activity, like “Tuesday morning, 7 am – 8 am, Speed Session – Intervals 6x800m”.

OK, I know, I’m a marathon runner. You surely don’t need to go that far to get noticeable results. But make sure you mark down your work calendar with these daily activities, even if it’s 20 minutes walking around the block. 

You will feel better, energized, and stronger at addressing your challenges