Learn your boss's mental models, not just their decisions

What is much more helpful than understanding what your CEO thinks is, I think understanding how your CEO thinks.

"Stack levels" refers to organizational hierarchy levels, while "left and right" means adjacent teams or functions at your same level.

I call this going two stack levels up, two stack levels down in terms of your curiosity and what you understand, and also, knowing what's to the left and what's to the right.

Imagine how frustrating that is for both the reviewer and the person who's reviewing. It could be made so much better if you just engaged with your leaders before you actually build a strategy.

You as a PM perhaps are fixated... on the execution level, which is what does it take to get something done? The CEO on the other hand is approaching it from the impact level... there is that mismatch.