Sue Siegel has worked at seven companies and voluntarily left only one. When uncertainty becomes unmanageable, she either forces a decision through action or exits. Startups face survival pressure from dwindling cash; large corporations struggle with project allocation. Her strategy: confront uncertainty directly, and recognize when indecision means it's time to go.
Chapters
The question he's asking is, how do you marry up uncertainty and accountability and almost in any size company, by the way? Because I'll tell you, in the startup world, when you are getting to a point where in fact, you're running out of money and there's an uncertainty of whether you're going to get funded or not, that uncertainty is pressure and your accountability is even higher because it's all about survival, okay? In the big company, the uncertainty is, do I get the allocation? Don't I get the allocation? Is this project going to survive? Is it not going to survive? The pressure's a little different, no doubt about it. But how do they coexist? It's a great question, and I don't think I have a clear answer that it just goes magically. But I will tell you what I do when I have uncertainty in any size company that I've been at, and that's I force an answer, and if I can't get an answer, I force it myself and it's happened or I leave. There comes times when you decide it's time. Of the seven companies I've been with, organizations I've been with, I will tell you I've only left one because I wanted to. All the other ones doors opened and it was time to go, okay? And I walked through those doors, I left one. And I'm not going to tell you which one it was, but I will tell you it's because the uncertainty was so big and they just couldn't figure out what they wanted to do that it was time to go.
