Do you understand your exec's calendar?

People don't understand executive calendars. I describe an executive's calendar as like a strobe light going off. You wake up at 8:00 AM, you've already got a huge list of urgent things going on. You go from a meeting with finance on a budget to an interview for another executive, to a people problem, to a legal problem, to a product review. And the product manager coming to that product review who's trying to make a pitch thinks, I've been prepping for this meeting for 2 weeks since we last spoke. But the executive coming into that session Hasn't thought about you since. You have to understand that they have not had the time, the energy, the wherewithal to center your problems, and you have to help them get into that mindset. Just take 30 seconds at the top of a meeting. Why are we here? What happened the last time we talked? Why is this important to you? And really remember that they are not thinking just about you. They are optimizing for a global maximum and not for the local that you're optimizing for.