Becoming a conscious leader: Leading without fear, finding your life’s objective function, and getting better at vision and strategy | John Mark Nickels (Uber, Waymo, DoorDash)

Oct 6, 2024 1h 18m 19 insights Episode Page ↗
JM Nichols, a product leader at Waymo, DoorDash, and Uber, discusses conscious leadership, soft skills, strategy development, and balancing vision with execution, offering insights on emotional intelligence and life purpose.
Actionable Insights

1. Break Victim Consciousness

Commit to shifting from feeling like life is happening to you to taking responsibility for how you see the world. This empowers you to choose your response to circumstances and view challenges as growth opportunities, rather than feeling at the effect of external factors.

2. Get Clear on Life’s Objective

Define your life’s objective function by considering “future me” (e.g., five years from now). This helps prioritize daily actions based on long-term values, like relationships, over short-term gains, like a slightly better presentation.

3. Practice Mindfulness of Mortality

Cultivate an awareness that life will end to re-evaluate daily priorities. This perspective helps you stop wasting time on things that don’t matter and focus on what truly counts, like relationships and impactful work.

4. Cultivate Self-Worth from Within

Stop seeking external approval, control, or security to complete something internally. Relying on internal self-worth prevents a “hungry ghost” cycle where external achievements are never enough, fostering genuine self-love.

5. Allow Emotions to Arise

Instead of fighting or suppressing stressful thoughts and emotions, simply allow them to be present. This breaks negative feedback loops, as “what you resist will persist,” and allows for a more open and curious state.

6. Welcome Emotions in the Workplace

Recognize that emotions carry wisdom and can be valuable signals in professional settings. Pay attention to how emotions manifest in your body (e.g., fear, sadness, anger, joy, creative energy) and consider voicing them to shift the tone of conversations and foster deeper understanding.

7. Practice Conscious Leadership

Become more aware of your interior world, biases, and inherited belief systems, then take responsibility for your influence in the world. This approach recognizes that everyone is a leader through their impact on others, regardless of formal title.

8. Prioritize Product Impact Over Optics

Focus primarily on building an “awesome product” and manifesting great work, rather than solely on presentation optics or how you are perceived. Paradoxically, this dedication to genuine impact often leads to greater recognition and career advancement.

9. Develop Strategy Through Passion

Choose to work in product areas where you have a tremendous amount of passion, as this serves as the fuel and motivation for breaking through challenges and developing effective strategies. Personal excitement for the mission is a precursor to strategic success.

10. Deeply Immerse in Your Domain

Spend significant time (e.g., years) deeply immersed in a specific product area to develop a strong strategy. It’s challenging to create innovative strategies with only short-term experience, as nuance and long-term trends require sustained focus.

11. Apply First Principles Thinking

Question why things are the way they are, identifying inefficiencies or non-optimal aspects from a fundamental level. This approach, exemplified by asking “why” about vehicle weight or rocket costs, often reveals doorways to new opportunities and innovative solutions.

12. Visualize the Future for Vision

Close your eyes and imagine a salient picture of the future (5-10 years out) in your domain. This exercise helps develop a compelling vision by considering how cities, transportation, or other aspects might evolve, inspiring action and guiding strategy.

13. Carve Out Contemplative Time

Regularly schedule dedicated time (e.g., a couple of hours) away from back-to-back meetings and daily distractions to engage in deep, contemplative thinking. Activities like running, hiking, or driving without media can help you access a different headspace for strategic ideation.

14. Foster Co-Creative “Brain Trust” Sessions

Organize extended, laptop-free sessions with your team to brainstorm and riff on ideas, similar to Pixar’s “brain trust.” This collaborative environment, free of judgment and attachment to being right, fosters co-exploration and generates innovative solutions.

15. Balance Vision and Execution

Avoid extremes of either excessive theorizing without action or “ready, fire, aim” execution without sufficient strategy. Dynamically adjust your focus between deep strategic thinking and pedal-to-the-metal execution, learning from both approaches.

16. Prioritize 1-3 High-Leverage Tasks

Limit your daily or weekly to-do list to the one to three most important, highest-leverage items. This practice helps maintain focus, ensures significant impact, and prevents getting overwhelmed by a long list of less critical tasks.

17. Empty Your Mind by Writing Things Down

Get all your to-dos, ideas, and reminders out of your head and onto paper or a digital system. An “empty mind” is crucial for creativity and focus, as trying to remember everything while also being productive is a recipe for disaster.

18. Create Space for Junior Voices

As a senior leader, consciously sit back and create space for more junior colleagues to speak up in meetings. Be mindful of power dynamics and avoid needing to “win the argument,” allowing others to contribute their perspectives first.

19. Optimize Sleep with Smart Technology

Consider using a smart mattress system like Eight Sleep to program a temperature curve that maximizes REM and deep sleep. High-quality sleep is a key foundation for showing up with the right mindset, energy, and aliveness.