Hi Reader,
I just got back from my trip to Northern Spain - a few days in Gijón, which is a city on the Atlantic coast, and then half the week in Oviedo, the capital of Asturias. It was a great trip enjoying the cooler weather, visiting some beautiful beaches and doing a lot of reading during the 5 hour train journey, at the beach and in the hotel bar with cocktails (I finished 3 novels!)
Now I'm back to work and back to a mountain of Slack messages.
Hot tip: If you go away on PTO for more than a couple of days, don't try to read all of the Slack messages when you return. Read your DMs, skim the threads you were tagged in and save important ones to address later. But then what I like to do is declare "Slack bankruptcy". I just mark all channels as read, knowing that I can seek out the important updates that I need on various projects I'm involved in. And any other information will find me eventually. 🤷🏻♀️
This week is a busy one because it's the last week in our biannual performance review cycle.
A few years ago, I posted a video on my YouTube channel reading through my self-review that I wrote as part of our performance review process. While I'm not back in video making mode yet (although some ideas definitely came to mind on my trip!), I thought I'd share a few key takeaways I got from reading my review packet.
Here's a couple of things I'm doing well according to my manager, and a few areas I'll be working on developing in.
What's going well
I'm elevating Brand Studio from a reactive service to a strategic partner - My manager noted that I made meaningful progress fostering better cross-functional collaboration between Brand and Marketing, and that my influence is increasingly strategic. My voice is shaping how we position Kit, how teams prioritize, and how we tell our story in-market.
I work transparently and share my thinking - My manager noted that I embody our "work in public" company value by sharing my thinking via Looms, strategy docs, and planning frameworks. He specifically mentioned my contributions to our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) definition as an example of this. (perhaps I'll share more about that in future issue!)
Where I need to grow
I need to expand my ICP influence across the entire company - My manager wants me to play an even more central role in shaping foundational narratives that speak to our ideal customer and ensuring they cascade across all channels. He wants me to hold a high bar for company-wide ICP implementation, just as I did for the Kit rebrand last year. And I need to not just influence, but iterate on our ICP definition to ensuring we're positioning ourselves in the right way for the right people.
I still haven't solved process issues we face with managing brand requests - My manager noted that streamlining the brand approval process to absorb more demand has not yet come to fruition and remains important to fully unlock my team's leverage and impact. I wrote about this problem in an issue a few months ago when I shared some ideas for how AI could help with this, so I wasn't surprised that this came up in my review. It's really important that I solve this so myself and my team can do less firefighting and more strategic work.
Those are just a few takeaways, but I hope sharing them was useful. I'm sure you'll see the growth areas pop up in future issues as I share how I'm addressing them!
I'm really curious to know what your takeaways were from your last performance review cycle. What feedback did you get? What growth areas are you working on?
Please reply and share if you feel like it! All replies to these emails go directly to my inbox and I love reading them and learning about what you're working on.
Talk soon,
