This is the story, my story, of the chapter when I became a better colleague with playground advice.
It started with emails from my peers that felt something like this:
It all felt like it was going so well.
Second year at the company.
For a person that started his career in seed-stage startups — the absolute scale of this business and the “line goes up” revenue number for which I was responsible was dizzying.
I’m leading growth for millions of visitors, millions of dollars, with some pretty visible wins under my belt.
I became a very visible person at Intuit.
First, I talk a lot. I raise my hand a lot. I ask a lot of questions. I’m in every meeting.
Second, the work I was doing felt quite important — very visible, strategic work. I was tied into a lot of the top leadership bets because experiments were critical to getting them over the line.
This visibility had perks:
I could hire when I needed while my peers kept flat headcounts
My team upgraded onto new platforms and toys when my peers were working with what they had
I didn’t have unlimited budget, but I never once heard a ‘no’
For a while, it felt like success begets success. Line goes up.
What I failed to appreciate was how I was plowing ahead but leaving people behind…
Not bringing others along through the story.
Not celebrating their successes.
Not offering much help.
Not recognizing their contributions properly.
You can see the problem. This probably lasted half a year.
Eventually — the work I was doing needed outside help. Expertise and resources.
I’d say: “hey, I’m working on this thing for this exec, I’d love to know if you could help me out with X and Y. Could use a point-of-view.”
The answer I got back, consistently, would be an email written in polite corporate that told me where and in which direction I could go.
I’m painting a selfish picture but I got here honestly — I was so worried about missing my “line goes up” number that I was neglecting the collaborative, team-building and socializing work that would become my real, lasting impact here.
Cue performance reviews.
Two leaders gave enough of a hoot about me and my future to share the difficult feedback;
“Hey, just so you know, we’re hearing some consistent things and we want to talk to you about it; some of your peers are feeling like you’re moving out way ahead.
They’re left behind while you’re making decisions without their input or even looping them in.
We brought you onto the team so you could help improve these things — for the whole team. We’re hearing that sometimes it feels like you’re not sharing the toys.”
Woof — but I listened.
I slowed down so I could explain the work we were doing meeting them at their level.
I checked peers’ Betterworks goals before conversations so I knew their priorities.
I brought people in earlier and I asked for their input. (It was often excellent and made our product way stronger.)
Finally — I volunteered my time toward their problems. I had the biggest impacts of my entire Intuit career in areas outside of my own domain;
a 30% increase in free trials with product positioning experiments. That wasn’t my space but we did that together.
massive, strategy-defining insights for a new service category from early user interviews I facilitated — learnings that came from my notebook but helped another leader explode his sales target
retention saves that helped keep more 12% customers in the brand by finding their right-fit product
You can have an outsized impact outside of your own role by supporting your peers in theirs.
Today I pay much more attention, much earlier, to what my peers are up to.
Sharing the spotlight not only feels safer, but it brings the whole team up to a higher level.
That’s the “line goes up” I’m most focused on in this chapter of my career.
I am the owner and principal consultant behind Formentor Labs, a niche growth practice teaching SaaS and DTC marketers how use science, empathy and experiments to grow their business.
Get in touch to learn how your own in-house team can:
gather boardroom-ready evidence for your growth strategy
win together, fail gracefully and argue less about data
act twice as fast validating ideas to market
convert 10-25% more visitors to customers without additional spend
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