Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

by Tony Fadell

The CEO and executive team are mostly staring way out on the horizon—50 percent of their time is spent planning for a fuzzy, distant future months or years away, 25 percent is focused on upcoming milestones in the next month or two, and the last 25 percent is spent putting out fires happening right now at their feet. They also look at all the parallel lines to make sure everyone is keeping up and going in the same direction. Managers usually keep their eyes focused 2–6 weeks out. Those projects are pretty fleshed out and detailed, though they still have some fuzzy bits around the edges. Managers’ heads should be on a swivel—they often look down, sometimes look further out, and spend a fair amount of time looking side to side, checking in on other teams, making sure everything’s coming together for the next milestone. Junior individual contributors spend 80 percent of their time looking straight down—maybe a week or two out—to see the fine points of their day-to-day work. In the early stages of your career, that’s the way it should be. You should be focused on getting your specific piece of each project done, done well, and out the door. Your executive team and managers are supposed to be looking out for roadblocks. They’re supposed to warn you so you can adjust course, or at least grab a helmet. But sometimes they don’t. So 20 percent of the time, individual contributors need to look up. And they need to look around. The sooner they start, the faster and higher they’ll adv...