Why your best work dies in the deck | Jenny Wood
Jenny Wood, New York Times bestselling author of Wild Courage: Go After What You Want and Get It and a former Google executive who spent eighteen years going from an entry-level job to running operations, on why the barrier to business impact isn't a lack of insight, it's the hesitation to act on it.
Along the way Jenny founded Own Your Career, one of Google's largest internal career-development programs, built as a side project while she held a full operations role. In this episode she gets into the three fears that stop people from acting, the difference between a truth and a tale, and the moment on a Boulder road at night when she realized something had to give.
The confession: She wanted Wild Courage to be a New York Times bestseller badly enough that she went full tilt for the year to eighteen months around the launch and couldn't see past it. It worked. She still says the juice probably wasn't worth the squeeze, because of what the obsession took from her family.
The cost: Her son was waiting in the car while she finished one last email, one last piece of book marketing, always one last thing. He got out, came back into the house, and told her why he didn't think she was coming: "Mom, because all you ever do is work." She calls it a dagger, and it's the thing that made her ask whether she was actually voting with her calendar. Two days later he dragged a friend into her office to show off the book cover, proud of her. Both things were true at once.
The takeaway: Stop opening with the spreadsheet. Use GRAB on your first slide when you need a decision from a stakeholder. Goal, Request, Action, Benefit. The ask belongs at the top, not on slide forty, so nobody spends thirty minutes wondering whether you want budget, a decision, or a shoulder to cry on.
Jenny is speaking on "Wild Courage: The Confidence to Act Before You Have All the Answers" at the Insights Association's Corporate Researchers Conference, September 15 through 17 in Chicago. Her session is Wednesday the 16th, 9:10 AM CT.
CRC: https://www.insightsassociation.org/Events/CRC-September-15-17-Chicago
Along the way Jenny founded Own Your Career, one of Google's largest internal career-development programs, built as a side project while she held a full operations role. In this episode she gets into the three fears that stop people from acting, the difference between a truth and a tale, and the moment on a Boulder road at night when she realized something had to give.
The confession: She wanted Wild Courage to be a New York Times bestseller badly enough that she went full tilt for the year to eighteen months around the launch and couldn't see past it. It worked. She still says the juice probably wasn't worth the squeeze, because of what the obsession took from her family.
The cost: Her son was waiting in the car while she finished one last email, one last piece of book marketing, always one last thing. He got out, came back into the house, and told her why he didn't think she was coming: "Mom, because all you ever do is work." She calls it a dagger, and it's the thing that made her ask whether she was actually voting with her calendar. Two days later he dragged a friend into her office to show off the book cover, proud of her. Both things were true at once.
The takeaway: Stop opening with the spreadsheet. Use GRAB on your first slide when you need a decision from a stakeholder. Goal, Request, Action, Benefit. The ask belongs at the top, not on slide forty, so nobody spends thirty minutes wondering whether you want budget, a decision, or a shoulder to cry on.
Jenny is speaking on "Wild Courage: The Confidence to Act Before You Have All the Answers" at the Insights Association's Corporate Researchers Conference, September 15 through 17 in Chicago. Her session is Wednesday the 16th, 9:10 AM CT.
CRC: https://www.insightsassociation.org/Events/CRC-September-15-17-Chicago
Connect with Jenny: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennyilles/
Get the book: https://wildcouragebook.com/
Find me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil/
Listen and follow: https://pod.link/6798471198
