How to Get Promoted Faster: These 5-Steps Made Me an Amazon VP

Speaker 1 • 00:00

Here, could you just briefly describe this this idea of the magic loop that you wrote about?

Speaker 2 • 00:04

Yeah, absolutely. So the magic loop is how to grow your career in almost any circumstance, even with a somewhat difficult manager. It does assume that you're working in some environment uh, you know, normally as an entrepreneur or with a boss. But the basic idea of the magic loop is five steps, and they're very easy. The first one is you have to be doing your current job well. It's not possible to really grow your career if you're not considered at least performing at a solid level. Now it doesn't mean you have to be the star on the team at this point, but What you can't have is your boss wishing that you were different. Like, oh, you know, Ethan's not very good. So you have to talk to your manager and find out how you're doing and address any problems. So step one is do your job well. Then step two is ask your boss how you can help. You know, as speaking as a manager, and I've talked to hundreds of managers Very few people go and ask their manager, what can I do to help you? What do you need? And so just asking sets you apart. And it begins to build a relationship that we're on the same team, that I'm here as a part of your organization to make you successful, not just myself Step three is whatever they say, do it. So uh you dig a big hole if you say, Well, uh, what could I do to help you? And they say, Well, we really need someone to like take out the trash each day and you're like, Oh, I didn't mean that. I I I wanted exciting work. I don't want to do, you know, sort of this uh maintenance work or whatever. So do what they ask. Help out, even if it's not your favorite work. Once you've done that though, and maybe you do that a couple times. The fourth step is where the magic comes in. You go back to your manager and say, hey, I'm really enjoying working with you. I'm wondering, uh, is there some way I could help you that would also help me reach my goal? And whether that goal is to change roles or get a raise or get a promotion, you say, you know, my goal is I'd really like to learn this new skill. Is there something you need that would also help me learn this new skill? And the reason this works is managers help those who help them. It's just human nature. We all do that Generally, they're very open to meeting you halfway and saying, sure, you know, I need this, we can rearrange it. Um, we can find a way to meet your goals over time. Now For step four to work, you do have to know what is your goal. So you have to be clear on what it is you want. Well that part's up to you. And then step five is the easiest step of all. It's just repeat. So like lather, rinse, repeat with your shampoo. Step five is once you're working with your manager towards your goal and discussing where you're going and you're helping each other. The magic of the loop is just go around and around. So I called it the magic loop because I pioneered it with uh my audience a few years ago. And it worked so well that people were writing back in and saying, how do I turn this off? Like I'm I'm in over my head now. My boss has asked me to do all these cool things and I feel like I can't catch up and I've already been promoted once and I need time to like digest it. And it just seemed like it worked like magic. It worked in almost every circumstance. There are of course exceptions where you have very exploitative managers who are like, oh, it's great you're working harder. Keep doing that and they won't do anything for you. But those are rare. And then the purpose, yeah, it's to help you get satisfaction in your career. A lot of people are unhappy with their jobs. Many people want to move up a level or get paid more. Not everyone. Some people want to change what they're doing, they're bored. This is a path to all of that because it's forming a partnership with your leadership. To say, look, I'll help you, but I need you also to help me. And most good managers are very open to that.

Speaker 1 • 04:01

When we were working on this, one of the pieces of feedback I had was I feel like I could just tell my manager, hey, I want to grow in my career. What can we work on to help me get there? And your feedback was like most managers were not are not that good and not that thoughtful about their employees' careers. Can you just talk a little bit about that? Because people may be hearing this and be like, why do I need to do this? This seems like a lot of work.

Speaker 2 • 04:24

You know, if you have a great manager, you may not need to do nearly as much formality. They may have given you good feedback so you don't need to ask for feedback. They may have offered you opportunities to step up and you've said yes to some and maybe no to others. That's fantastic. I designed a magic loop for the people who either don't know what to do or their manager is either not that good or just very busy. Remember, lots of managers have great intentions to help their employees But they get busy with their own lives, their own work, all the things they're focused on, and also their own career. The manager is often busy thinking about their own needs. And so they just They mean to get to you next week and next week drifts on for a year.

Speaker 1 • 05:09

What has come up since this has come out that you would want to either add to or tweak? Or help people better understand. I imagine a lot of there's some criticism. I imagine there's a lot of yes, yes, yes. This really works.

Speaker 2 • 05:21

Two things I'd love to clarify. The first is Many people ask me, well, why why do I have to do this? Shouldn't my manager notice what I'm doing? Shouldn't my manager help with my career? Shouldn't my manager be uh planning for me, you know, and what I say about that is what your manager should do and four dollars will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks The point of this loop is it's in your control. It is true that a good manager would do all those things I just mentioned, but Not all managers are good and some of them need some help. And the thing I would just say about the magic loop is it's in your control. And so you can be sort of upset that your manager isn't perfect, but Move on from that and take control of your own situation. That's the first thing I'd say. The other big extension I would make is: look, if you are a manager or a leader of any type, You can initiate the magic loop from your side. So you can talk to your employees and say, hey, what are your career goals You know, would you like to form a partnership where you step up to new challenges and I help you get to your goals? I had a lot of success forming this kind of partnership. with my employees where as they saw growth and success, they really leaned in and like, oh, the system works. You're actually investing in me. Now I'll work extra hard. And I'm like, yes, and we can grow your team or grow your opportunity. And it was very win-win.

Speaker 1 • 06:56

To give people a little bit of social proof, you mentioned some of the folks you've worked with on this. Can you share some stories or stats or anything to help people understand how helpful this ended up being to folks you've worked with?

Speaker 2 • 07:07

Yeah, absolutely. I'll go I'll tell one story from each end of the spectrum. And what I mean there is entry-level people and then sort of high-level executive leaders. I had uh an entry-level person write me back and say, look When I when I learned about the magic lube, I was at a company and not doing very well. I started applying it They offered me a $30,000 raise and a bigger job. And I turned it down because I got hired at this other company that was offering me even more. And I went there and they've promoted me also. And he was one of the people who wrote in and said You know, uh his exact words were a year ago I was made redundant. So he's in the UK, redundant is their word for for laid off. A year ago I was made redundant, I got this first job and I got an offer for an increased salary, and then I got this second job. And I got an increase when I joined that was even bigger. And he was in that situation of like, now I need to sort of slow down and digest all of that. On the complete other end, um one of my uh best people I ever worked with joined my team at Amazon as what we would call an SDE2, which in Amazon is a level five employee. He grew with me kind of following this process to a senior engineer, then he switched to management and ran a small team. Then he became a senior manager. And he relocated with my my organization. He opened a new office in another city, was eventually promoted to director. um running his own office of a couple hundred people. And this was over the course of about eight years. He went from a mid level engineer to a an executive with a team of eight hundred people. We had this now he was a very hard worker But we over this eight years we just saw all this progress. And then eventually he moved on. He founded his own startup. sold that and now works as an executive vice president of one of the um major sort of online banks. And so You know, his career in some sense has exceeded mine, but during that eight year span, he just grew so much. And this is the process we followed.

Speaker 1 • 09:29

What levels does this help you with? At what level is this most useful? And then does it kind of taper out it? I don't know if you get to VP level, do you still try using magic loop?

Speaker 2 • 09:39

So I think it works anywhere from the start of your career to pretty far into it. I think at, you know, my level, I I finished my career as a vice president at Amazon. It does peter out in the sense of the active. And what I mean by that is you're still doing the same thing, but you don't have to talk about it. Your managers are expecting you to step up and recognize challenges. They're expecting you to ask for resources when you need them. And You don't sort of have this level of explicit conversation around what can I help you with? They're expecting you to anticipate what's needed. So in the newsletter we did together, I wrote about how over time you go from asking your manager, how can I help, to suggesting to your manager, these are some things I see that seem like they need to be done, would you like me to do them? To just seeing what needs to be done and sort of keeping your leader in the loop and saying, hey, I noticed that We have this problem, I fixed it, I noticed we have this opportunity, I've started program against it. I think at the executive level, it's much more you being proactive and just sort of keeping your leader in the loop

Speaker 1 • 10:50

I think in the post the way you described this step is this is advanced mode, don't jump straight to this. Don't just start suggesting things because you may you may get it wrong

Speaker 2 • 10:58

Yeah, it's well, it's all a matter of rapport and trust. A huge part of career success is how much trust you have, mutual respect with your leadership When they get to they're confident that you're gonna make the right decisions, they're confident to let you go. But yeah, you know, when you're brand new or you're new to a manager, if you just jump in, You may either not work on the things they value or even find yourself working across purposes, and that that isn't the right place to start.

Speaker 1 • 11:25

Awesome. Okay, just to close out in this conversation. Maybe just you touched on this, but w why is it that you think this is so important and effective? Why do you think this works so well? People may not recognize like I see this is the key to this.

Speaker 2 • 11:37

Well, I think it's two things. First I mentioned how rare it is. Managers, uh, how rare it is for managers to be offered help. If you're a manager, you'll recognize this. If not, feel free to talk to any manager you know, whether your own or somebody else. Ask them how much they worry and how much they feel overwhelmed and wish someone would give them a hand. Management can be a lonely job because you feel like you're responsible for everything. You know, so having an ally, it's just a huge weight off people's shoulders And then I think a lot about social engineering. The social engineering here is just the simple, you help me, I'll help you. Like It doesn't have to be exploitative. It's just, we help those people who help us. And that's built in this sort of human survival. And I think this loop works so well because it's just leaning a little bit into that behavior. So many relationships with managers are oppositional. Oh, you tell me what to do, and I kind of I'm kind of like a kid in high school who's trying to figure out how do I skip as many classes as possible and turn in as little homework and still get by with a D. That relationship won't build your career. Some people approach their jobs as my goal is to do the least I can and still collect my paycheck. That's an approach if you're okay with like where you are. It's not what I coach, though. I assume people want to grow

Speaker 1 • 13:08

I think there's two like really important elements of this that you haven't even mentioned necessarily that I think are part of the reason this works so well. One is this forces you and your manager to identify the gaps that are keeping you from the next level, which a lot of is like a like it's often vague and then you get to a performance review and then your manager's like, you didn't you're still not good on this and this and that. And you're like, you never told me that that's the things you're looking for for me to get promoted. So I think there's this implicit like here's what you need to work on to get to the next level, which I think is part of step four. And then you actually did touch on this that it's important to share your goal to your manager. Here's what I want. I want to get promoted. A lot of times they don't know that. And you helping them understand here's what I want, help me get there goes a long way. So there's a lot of things.

Speaker 2 • 13:51

Yeah, managers often fall into the trap. They chose to become managers. So they assume one of two things about you. They either assume that you want to keep doing exactly what you're doing forever, just maybe make a little more money. So you're an artist, you wanna keep doing you know, you wanna keep drawing forever. uh you know, you're a lawyer, you want to keep writing contracts forever. Or they assume that, hey, I became a manager, I'm very proud of my career. That must be what you want. And These assumptions are natural, right? We tend we tend to view by default that like our path is great and everyone would want to be us. Now of course some good managers don't do that, but if you clarify and express your goals, you remove that ambiguity.

Speaker 1 • 14:31

Okay, so along the same lines of career progression. You work with a lot of senior manager types, kind of the level of like L7, M1, M2-ish. And you share with me that one of the most frustrating parts of their job in that specific portion of their careers, they get stuck at that level and they don't move up and it becomes really annoying and they're not sure how to break out of that. What advice do you share with folks like that that may be listening?

Speaker 2 • 14:57

Yeah, so it's common to get stuck there. And there are a few reasons for it. First, there are a lot of senior managers. If you think of your average director, uh they may have six to eight reports how many more directors are needed. So there's a choke point. Second, uh that choke point is worse in the current economy. In in the past, maybe A lot of companies, Amazon, Google, Apple, et cetera, were growing very rapidly. And so it wasn't just you were waiting for some other director to leave. The teams were getting bigger. I experienced this at Amazon where over a nine-year period I went from managing six people to eight hundred And so I went from a senior manager all the way to a vice president. And I I describe I was in some sense just riding the elevator. Like the elevator was going up, and as long as I managed to stay on it I was going to arrive at vice president. But uh the other thing that causes people to get stuck is the difference between a senior manager and a director is kind of how you lead and the work you're doing. You can get as far as senior manager by being really strong in your function and being really good at getting things done. As a director, it becomes much more, and as a VP beyond that, it becomes much more about influence. coordination with others and letting go of sort of being in all the details yourself. And so senior managers really have to change some behavior. I often reference the book by Marshall Goldsmith, What Got You Here Won't Get You There. Not only because it's a great book classically on this problem, but because the title tells the story. All the great traits that got you to this one level kind of won't get you to the next level where you're more expected to be thinking in strategic terms, thinking longer term

Speaker 1 • 16:48

So to someone that may be in that role today and they're not moving up, is there anything they can do? This point about just like there's no roles for you, like there's only so much you can do there. Is it is the advice just like wait until an opportunity arrives? Is it run this magic loop? Until something happens, is there anything you can do?

Speaker 2 • 17:04

I would be honest with people and say some patience is required. You know, uh at this level there is some notion of do we need a director, do we need a vice president Do we have a challenge at that level that needs that person? And so promotions at this level I often teach have two components. The first component is can I eat and do that job? Am I qualified? Do I have the skills? But the second piece is do we have such a job that needs that? However, there is a lot you can do. A lot is in your control. And what is in your control is to start practicing those next level skills. Start working with your leadership on Where can I take on a strategic project? How can I become more of an inventor? I teach some about how to sort of systematically be inventive. It's not pure magic. You know, uh Edison said it's uh what 1% inspiration and 99 % perspiration. You can learn the 99 % and the 1% isn't as hard then So you start showing those next level traits, and as I describe it most succinctly, how do you make yourself the person who will be chosen out of the eight? And you can be chosen. There are several ways to move up. Your boss can leave or be let go. They can be promoted to another role. But another way is I have several I coach now and I have several clients recently. I was just talking to a client yesterday. Her two peers were let go. They were all the same level. Her two peers were let go and she was given their teams. And you know, she expressed that her boss had been told, you have too many, you have too many senior managers. for the size of your organization, we need to do some some change in the organization. Clean house and put all your people under the folks who have potential. Well Obviously, she must be one of those people because she still has her job and has more people and more to do. And unfortunately, her peers are shopping for new employment. So be that person, and that's where the magic loop comes in. Be that person.

Speaker 1 • 19:09

You mentioned this word inventiveness, and I was just listening to Jeff Bezos on Lex Friedman. And I don't know if you heard this, but he Jeff Bezos described himself most as an inventor More than anything else that he does. Is that something that you think about? Is that is that influenced by Jeff Bezos anyway? That idea of being an inventor as a as a leader.

Speaker 2 • 19:29

I'll say a couple things about that. First, I know you talked to my old boss, Bill Carr, who wrote working backwards.

Speaker 1 • 19:34

Yeah.

Speaker 2 • 19:34

What I don't know is if he shared with you that after he published it, he actually realized there w there was a better title. He wishes that he had called the book The Invention Machine. Because what Jeff was trying to do with Amazon was create the most inventive company, the company that would systematically out-invent others. And so while working backwards is a great title. Bill and Jeff think they should have called it the invention machine. When I joined Amazon, I did not think of myself as an inventor, but I saw that we had these leadership principles think big and invent and simplify. that pushed on that. And I said, I'm in trouble. I don't know how to do this. And I sat down and thought about that. Like, what am I going to do? It seems like that's required. And I figured out how to become systematically inventive. So I now hold over 70 patents as one benchmark of inventiveness, and they were all uh created during my 15 years at Amazon And the way I did that, inventiveness actually isn't that hard. I teach about this, and to invent systematically, first you do need to be somewhat of an expert in whatever area you want to invent. So like Lenny, if you and I say, let's get together and we're going to invent cancer drugs, we have the problem that we're neither of us, as far as I know, is a biologist, a doctor, you know, we don't have the right background. We don't know what we're doing. So we would just be fumbling around, I guess, with a bathtub full of chemicals, hoping. It's probably not going to work out that well. So you have to be something of a knowledgeable expert. But then the second thing people don't do is they don't spend dedicated time actually thinking. They feel like, oh, invention is just gonna come to me. When I want to invent I get away from all my devices. I go in a room with the problem I have, and I force myself to actually concentrate on what do I know and how can I invent. And the most Straightforward way to invent is not to somehow come up with something completely new, but instead to put together two things that exist. And so my example of this, I have a patent I talk about a lot. uh for a drone delivery for Amazon, but the the drone doesn't fly from the warehouse. Instead A truck with no top drives slowly around the neighborhood, and the drones go back and forth from the truck, as opposed to the driver stopping at every house, you can have four or six drones hitting everything in the neighborhood And the way I came up with this idea is one day I was thinking about drones and delivery, but I loved military history. And so I was thinking also about an aircraft carrier. And I was thinking like, is there a way to have an aircraft carrier for drones? And from that, it was very quick for the light bulb to go on and say, well, what about a truck? And you know, so I have this patent and we haven't seen this become reality yet. You know, I'm waiting for the my my idea to become part of Amazon's drone delivery system, but I think ultimately it will.

Speaker 1 • 22:48

That is badass. I'm imagining returns come back to the truck we're using that rope thing that just like captures them with that little hook.

Speaker 2 • 22:57

Yeah, well there's no reason you know, same thing. When you want to return something as opposed to taking it to the UPS store or whatever, you just put it on your porch and then on your phone, on your app. You know, maybe you take a picture of it so that the drone can recognize the box or you put it in a designated spot and you push a button and the drone takes your r return away. Like yes, there's no reason.

Speaker 1 • 23:18

Can't wait for that. Kind of going back to the beginning of a career. or at least getting a job, what have you found is most helpful in standing out as a candidate when you're interviewing and just essentially getting hired? What advice do you have for people that may be going through an interview process right now?

Speaker 2 • 23:33

There's a lot of evidence that suggests that um the number one and two factors in any interview are appearance and enthusiasm. And it doesn't mean you have to be beautiful, but you know, show up somewhere looking like you're interested in the job, not in your pajamas. And most importantly, be enthusiastic. People want to work with people that want to work with them. So if you seem very judgmental of the company and like you have to sell me on it, you're going to turn them off. I look at every interview of whether or not I really want this job, I might have decided I don't want the job I still want the offer. And so I come to any interview I do leaned in and talking about how excited I am to be a part of this opportunity and what I know about the company. Beyond those cosmetics, the biggest thing I see, particularly at higher levels, is people talk about what they have done, but not why it mattered. They don't talk about the impact. See, a leader is not hiring someone to just do work. They're hiring someone because they have a problem or a need. And so if you can show them look Here's the things I've done that have made a difference. Here's the things I've done that have helped my past employers where I've had an impact. So I didn't just do work. That makes you a worker. Someone who has an impact is more of a leader. And leader doesn't need to mean people manager, just a higher level, right? That I have done something that solved the big problem and here's how it changed the company or customer outlook. That's what I'm looking for in an interview is are you bringing me an understanding of the business that shows you contributed to the business or are you just telling me how hard you worked?

Speaker 1 • 25:20

Awesome. On that first piece, now that most interviews I imagine are over Zoom. In terms of enthusiasm and looking professional, is there anything you've found that you people may not be thinking about in those two buckets?

Speaker 2 • 25:33

Well yeah, uh, you know Show the person full-time dedication. So unless you really don't have any choice, don't take an interview from a car, don't have your camera off. You know, eye contact is still a real thing, body language is still a real thing, gestures like I'm making now with my hands. They're they're part of your presentation. And so be fully present and try to project through the camera a little bit of I'm excited to be a part of this and I appreciate the opportunity. You know that I often tell people the best way to prep for an interview might be a good night's sleep and a and a pot of coffee. That that being you know fully engaged and energetic is a huge lever.

Speaker 1 • 26:19

Awesome. And I think basically the feedback there is don't over obsess with the content. There's a lot of value in just how you come across.

Speaker 2 • 26:27

Yeah. 100%.

Speaker 1 • 26:29

Along the lines of lessons, last question here, just What's something that you've took away from the way you approached it that you shouldn't ha should have changed or should have done differently? That you just you've done differently since, you know, obviously like Don't like you mentioned this idea of don't promise a date that you're not that certain you're gonna hit. I guess is there anything along those lines?

Speaker 2 • 26:50

I have two things here. First, Amazon loved in the past, they love surprise launches They love the idea of we're gonna be quiet, quiet, quiet, because basically it was a reaction I think to Microsoft where they felt Microsoft always talked about what was coming and then pushed the dates back. And so there was this whole thing about vaporware And Amazon wanted to be the other way, which is we won't say anything and then it will just be there. The problem I came to say is the biggest thing I learned with surprise launches is that you're surprised by what doesn't work. And so I shifted the approach to let's do a lot of beta testing. We always, even if others don't agree, fight and say You're right, we're not going to have a surprise launch. Some of our beta testers, even if they sign NDAs, are going to leak. And that's a that's a better outcome than launching something that doesn't work. Uh that's one lesson. The other lesson is this thing that broke in front of Jeff Bezos, ultimately it was a new college graduate engineer who wrote that code. And he had been left alone to write part of our user interface, but he had written it in such a way that it didn't scale. Now, we didn't give him any help or oversight. We left him on his own because we were busy focusing on other pieces of the problem. And shortly after the disaster, he left the company. And the mistake I made was not reaching out to him and really reassuring him of like, hmm. Yes, you wrote the bug, but that's not on you. Like the system failed you and we don't see you. Bugs happen. So the thing I regret in this whole thing is Not realizing that even though no one in the team ever yelled at him or whatever, he knew it was his bug. And he obviously saw me and others sort of taking a beating And so he left. And I I wish he hadn't done that. And I wish more than that I had stepped in. I didn't realize what he was feeling.