“He just doesn’t get it.”

That’s said a lot more often than people realize right after someone leaves the room. And that’s bad for everyone.

When the average product, marketing, analytics, sales, tech, or even finance person leaves the room, the impression they just made is that they are siloed, thinking a little too small, being a bit naive (or very naive), and using their own language.

And as devastating as it is to someone’s career to be labeled as someone who “doesn’t get it” by a senior leader, CEO, founder, or board member, it’s also bad for those senior leaders, CEOs, founders, and board members who feel they got nothing out of the hour they just spent.

So, it’s in everyone’s best interest to get this right. This isn’t a career hack. This is a true performance modifier, time saver, and speed enhancer.

The problem is simple. This issue happens when people are not speaking the language leadership speaks. When we fix this problem, everyone wins in two ways.

These posts are all about the contrast between what normal advice and ideas look like, and what great looks like. Topics like these usually get the same amount of attention as a get well soon card, and that’s why so many teams struggle. They deserve more. So let’s show that contrast here.

What normal looks like is that every team shows up with their myopia.

What is myopia?

It’s the condition where the things close to us are clear, but the things farther from us are blurry.

It’s when marketers see their channels clearly, but they’ve never used the product they’re marketing.

It’s when finance knows what’ll shave a few bucks off of OPEX, but they have no clue what it’ll do to morale, focus, or customer behavior.

It’s when analytics people show up with statistics and charts, but know nothing about the customer’s mentality.

And I want to be clear: that is actually totally understandable. People are constantly told to stay in their lane, to focus on the things they can control, and that it’s impossible to know everything happening.

But this is the gap between theory and reality that get-well-soon-card thinking brings to the business world. Swim lanes, focusing on what you can control, and narrowing focus sound great in theory. But in the real world, they don’t actually work out. What they do, instead, is give people the very myopia that’ll result in “He just doesn’t get it.”

Leaders have a company to tend to. And at the core, that means they’re thinking about things differently than almost everyone else in the company. While most people are thinking about tasks, projects, milestones, and goals, leaders spend most of their time thinking and hoping to talk about 3 things:

Leaders aren't thinking in these three categories by preference…their role forces it. They answer to capital and valuation, so only real drivers count. They lead through others and get questioned in public, so stories are their actual working material. And their real job is deciding where scarce attention and resources go, which makes problems their unit of prioritization. Drivers, stories, and problems aren't leadership taste. They're the job itself.

Here’s what each one is and how you can push your own thinking to start speaking Leadership Language today. If you want a deeper dive and more specific tactics, join me on Friday for the deep dive session and Q&A.

Key Drivers

Forget KPIs, KBOs, OKRs, metrics, etc. Literally forget all of them, entirely. Let’s start from scratch. There are only two major drivers of a business: revenue growth and profitability. If your idea, update, or outcome is driving one of these two things, this is how you should be talking about it. Do the translation.

There is a third driver category that is sexy to talk about, too: speed and efficiency. But if your speed or efficiency drives revenue growth or profitability, why are you talking about speed or efficiency? Yeah, they’re cool. But impact on drivers is cooler.

And there are many other metrics that might be interesting: retention, deal cycle, ROI/ROAS, cash flow, uplift from A/B tests, etc. But are these the leadership language?

No. They’re untranslated details.

Stories

This is the one almost everyone underestimates. Leaders need stories. Leaders tell stories. Leaders want to hear stories.

Two stories, in particular:

“We have it handled.”

This is the story they (and you) will need when you are facing tough questions. What’s your AI strategy? What are we doing about retention? Why is CAC increasing? What are we going to do about privacy law?

When someone doesn’t have a story and they get caught flat-footed, that is really bad. And that makes stories themselves more valuable than you can possibly imagine. Be thinking of the stories you’ll need, and especially be thinking of the stories your leaders will need, and you’ll be giving them something they’ll be deeply grateful for.

“Wait until you hear this.”

These are the stories that show you’re thinking ahead, that you are strategic, and that you have vision. While the first story is reactive, these are the stories you tell before the questions are asked. They get people inspired, they get projects resourced, and they make the storyteller look like someone who truly gets it.

These stories need to go beyond the basics and they need to show real creativity and situational awareness about your market and your company. Coming up with these stories will eliminate myopia when done well. This is the story your CEO wants to tell their investors and the world, as proof that you are leaders and visionaries.

Problems

And leaders love problem solvers. If you want to talk about metrics other than drivers, problems are a great place to talk about them. Fixing a churn rate, a conversion rate, a turnover rate, or a defect rate is leader-worthy. Unblocking a project is leader-worthy. Getting two teams finally aligned is leader-worthy.

Problems, once fixed, are leader language. So are offers to fix problems that haven’t been fixed yet. Leaders love a hero and a problem addressed.

Everything Else

If you aren’t talking about a driver, a story, or a problem, you probably aren’t doing yourself or the leaders a favor. The work here is simple: it’s about translation. Push your mind to take anything you want to email, slack, or present to leaders and translate it into these 3 dialects of leadership.

If you want more detail and help, I’ll see you on Friday. Sign up for Friday’s mini-course below, and don’t forget that basic paid subscribers get a 25% discount.

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