Bet on Yourself

Bet on Yourself Plot Summary

Introduction

In 2003, Ann Hiatt nearly killed Jeff Bezos in a helicopter crash. This nerve-wracking incident, however, was far from career-ending. Instead, it became one of many defining moments in her remarkable journey through the highest echelons of Silicon Valley's tech giants. As an executive business partner who worked alongside three of the most influential CEOs in the digital era – Jeff Bezos at Amazon, followed by Marissa Mayer and Eric Schmidt at Google – Hiatt gained unprecedented access to the inner workings of companies that have fundamentally transformed our world. What makes Hiatt's story particularly compelling is how she leveraged her position as "the person in the room" to learn, grow, and eventually chart her own path. Her narrative isn't just about witnessing history being made at the dawn of e-commerce and the internet age; it's about the courage to create opportunities where none seemed to exist, the resilience to recover from failures, and the wisdom to recognize when to take calculated risks. Through her journey from a humble background to Silicon Valley insider and eventually entrepreneur, Hiatt reveals how anyone can apply the leadership principles of tech titans to their own career advancement, regardless of their starting point or current position on the corporate ladder.

Chapter 1: The Foundation: From Farm Roots to Fighter Jets

Ann Hiatt's beginnings couldn't have been further from the tech world she would eventually inhabit. Born into a family with farming roots in Idaho, Hiatt proudly describes herself as a "first-generation non-farmer." Her father broke family tradition when he decided against the agricultural life that had taken a toll on his own father, choosing instead to pursue his dream of becoming a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force. This pivotal decision – making a big bet on himself despite seemingly impossible odds – would later become a guiding principle in Hiatt's own career philosophy. Growing up as an Air Force brat, Hiatt developed adaptability and resilience early in life. Born at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, she spent her formative years in Anchorage, Alaska, where her father's squadron patrolled the airspace between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Interestingly, her father's military call sign was "Goose" – a name that would later become familiar to millions through the movie "Top Gun," which borrowed real-life call signs from her father's squadron. Being "Goose's daughter" taught Hiatt to pursue bold dreams even when they seemed unattainable, to work purposefully toward distant goals, and most importantly, to be brave. While her father was flying multimillion-dollar jets, Hiatt's mother was creating opportunities from limited resources thousands of miles from her Idaho comfort zone. In Alaska, she established a neighborhood preschool, pursued artistic interests, and taught her children to find extraordinary possibilities in ordinary circumstances. These early lessons in resourcefulness and community-building would later serve Hiatt well in corporate environments where innovation and relationship-building were paramount. The family's eventual move to Redmond, Washington – though chosen for its small-town feel rather than its tech industry – unknowingly positioned Hiatt at the epicenter of the digital revolution. Growing up near what would become the headquarters of some of the world's most successful tech companies exposed her to the pioneer entrepreneurs and moonshot thinkers who were shaping the future. This environment, combined with her parents' emphasis on hard work and big dreams, created fertile ground for Hiatt's later career. As the oldest of seven children, Hiatt developed organizational skills, self-motivation, and peacemaking abilities that would prove invaluable in managing complex corporate environments. From her father, she inherited analytical thinking and audacious goal-setting; from her mother, emotional intelligence and creative problem-solving. These complementary strengths would later enable her to thrive in high-pressure situations requiring both technical competence and interpersonal finesse. Perhaps most significantly, Hiatt's early life taught her that growth happens at the edge of comfort. Her first job at age sixteen at a music software startup called Musicware provided a crash course in business fundamentals and the importance of understanding how individual tasks contribute to a company's larger mission. When she made mistakes – like producing shoddy information packets that reflected poorly on the company – she learned quickly and never repeated them. This experience of accelerated learning through trial and error established a pattern that would define her approach to career advancement: taking on challenges beyond her current abilities and growing into them rather than waiting until she felt fully prepared.

Chapter 2: Sitting Beside Giants: Early Career at Amazon

In 2002, fresh out of college with degrees in international studies and Scandinavian studies, Ann Hiatt entered a tumultuous job market still reeling from the dot-com bust. Though her academic background hardly suggested a future in tech, a chance suggestion led her to apply for a junior assistant position at Amazon. After an intense, months-long interview process that culminated in a brain-teaser interview with Jeff Bezos himself (who asked her to estimate the number of glass panes in Seattle), Hiatt landed a position at what would become the most influential e-commerce company in the world. The job placed her at a desk just three feet from Bezos – the closest desk in the company to the founder. Years later, Hiatt would understand why Bezos took a chance on her: he surrounded himself with people he had to hold back, not push forward – ambitious, creative, determined individuals who made up for any expertise they lacked with sheer drive and problem-solving abilities. Her desk itself was symbolic of Amazon's ethos – it was one of the original "door desks" that Bezos had personally constructed from cheap doors purchased at Home Depot during Amazon's garage startup days, embodying the company's value of frugality. During her three years at Amazon, Hiatt witnessed the company's transformation from a struggling survivor of the dot-com crash to a profitable enterprise with a clear path to dominance. She was present for pivotal moments, including the development of Amazon Prime – a subscription model that would revolutionize e-commerce. The Prime concept was conceived during a Saturday morning meeting at Bezos's boathouse and announced just four weeks later, requiring the team to work 110-120 hours weekly during that month. Hiatt describes feeling as though the company was "in the front car of a roller coaster traveling at full speed while Jeff and our entire team frantically leaned out and built the track just ahead of us." Hiatt's role taught her to manage crisis situations, perhaps most dramatically when she had to coordinate the emergency response after Bezos's helicopter crashed during a property scouting trip in Texas. Rather than being fired for "almost killing" her CEO, Hiatt earned his respect through her calm handling of the situation. "Ann," Bezos told her afterward, "I hear you're really good under pressure." This crisis became one of the most accelerated learning experiences of her career, teaching her in a single day lessons about trusting her instincts, managing emergencies, and leading without formal authority. The Amazon experience also provided Hiatt with a model of leadership that valued bold risk-taking and long-term thinking over short-term profits. She observed how Bezos maintained unwavering confidence in his unconventional business strategy despite skepticism from Wall Street and the board of directors. When Bezos negotiated aggressively with shipping partners to make Prime viable – even temporarily diverting all Amazon traffic from FedEx at great expense to prove how much business they would lose – he demonstrated the courage to make big bets on a vision others couldn't yet see. When Hiatt eventually decided to leave Amazon to pursue her dream of academia in a PhD program at UC Berkeley, Bezos's enthusiastic support reinforced a lesson she'd learned from watching his own career trajectory: there is nothing better than investing in yourself and taking the chance to build your own dream rather than getting paid to build someone else's. Though leaving Amazon was emotionally difficult, the foundation she built there – in crisis management, strategic thinking, and calculated risk-taking – would prove invaluable in her next chapter.

Chapter 3: Google Years: Building Influence Without Authority

After a year in her PhD program at Berkeley, Hiatt received an unexpected call from a Google recruiter. Initially declining the offer multiple times, she finally agreed to tour the Google campus out of curiosity. The experience proved transformative – sitting at lunch between a former astronaut, a Tour de France cyclist, and Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the internet, Hiatt felt an immediate alignment with her ambitions. Despite her love for academia, the opportunity to work with "some of the world's most interesting people working on fascinating and deeply technical projects" was too compelling to ignore. Recruited to be the executive business partner to Marissa Mayer, then vice president of search products and user experience, Hiatt entered Google during a period of astronomical growth. Her first day coincided with a team off-site where she witnessed the future-looking-back approach to product vision that would make Google a dominant force. However, her transition was far from smooth. Overwhelmed by the technical terminology, code names, and breakneck pace, Hiatt initially fell into a performance mindset, focusing solely on the mounting tasks rather than lifting her eyes to see the bigger strategic picture. A turning point came when Mayer expressed disappointment that Hiatt hadn't known about an important meeting with the CEO. This criticism, though painful, prompted Hiatt to pivot her approach dramatically. She realized she needed to prioritize relationship-building across the company rather than just completing tasks. "If relationships were the way to get things done at Google," she reflected, "then I needed to build up what I came to refer to as my reserve of 'friendship currency' in the company." This mental shift from working harder to working smarter – focusing on the "rocks" (major milestone goals) rather than the "sand" (minor tasks) – became a foundational principle in her approach to career advancement. Hiatt's growth at Google accelerated through calculated risk-taking and a willingness to embrace discomfort. When accompanying Mayer on a trip to Zurich, she had an embarrassing moment when she spilled a Diet Coke over her laptop in front of Google co-founder Larry Page. Rather than allowing this humiliation to diminish her, Hiatt used it as motivation to prove her value through the remainder of the trip. This resilience in the face of failure became a recurring theme in her Google years, especially as she made the challenging decision to leave Mayer's team after three years to join CEO Eric Schmidt's office. The move to Schmidt's team represented a significant career pivot that came with unexpected costs. Mayer took Hiatt's departure as a personal slight, interpreting it as a lack of faith in her career trajectory. Similarly, years earlier, Bezos had been upset when he learned Hiatt had left her PhD to work at Google. These experiences taught Hiatt that "for leaders like Jeff Bezos and Marissa Mayer, their work and their person are one and the same." Despite the relational awkwardness, Hiatt recognized that the move was necessary for her professional growth, allowing her to develop new skills and perspectives. In her new role, Hiatt found creative ways to add value and increase her visibility. Volunteering to help assemble the packets for Schmidt's Monday senior staff meetings, she gained unparalleled access to the inner workings of the company during a critical growth period. Though this meant working weekends and asking questions that exposed her knowledge gaps, the calculated risk paid off in deepened relationships with senior leadership and enhanced understanding of Google's strategy. This pattern of volunteering for projects outside her core responsibilities became a hallmark of Hiatt's approach to career advancement, allowing her to consistently level up her impact while developing new skills and relationships.

Chapter 4: The Art of Pivoting: Mastering Career Transitions

Throughout her career, Ann Hiatt developed a remarkable ability to navigate transitions and transform challenges into opportunities. Her journey from Amazon to Google, from Marissa Mayer's team to Eric Schmidt's office, and eventually to entrepreneurship illustrates the principles of successful pivoting that anyone can apply to their career, regardless of industry or seniority level. The key to Hiatt's successful transitions was her focus on what she calls "learning mindset" over "performance mindset." While at Amazon, she observed how Jeff Bezos embodied this approach through quarterly thinking retreats where he would isolate himself from distractions to generate innovative ideas. At Google, she saw this mindset reflected in the company's OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) system, where hitting 100% of your goals meant you hadn't aimed high enough. When Marissa Mayer criticized Hiatt's first-quarter performance despite completing all her tasks, it wasn't because she had performed poorly, but because she hadn't stretched herself toward more ambitious goals. This learning orientation proved crucial when Hiatt faced one of her most significant pivots: transitioning from individual contributor to team leader after Eric Schmidt moved from CEO to executive chairman. Suddenly responsible for what felt like "the work of ten people," Hiatt needed to build a team from scratch. She applied principles learned from her CEO mentors: hire people more talented than yourself, create a flat structure where information flows freely, and establish systems that promote collaboration rather than competition. The result was a team so effective that Schmidt would later describe it as "embarrassingly good." Hiatt's approach to team building reflected her understanding that effective pivots require both personal growth and structural support. She designed her team of "three bodies with one mind," where members were interchangeable and tasks were assigned based on strengths rather than hierarchy. Daily sync meetings, shared email addresses, and transparent documentation ensured everyone remained aligned despite the complexity of their work. Though she made mistakes as a first-time manager – occasionally stepping on toes while attempting quality control – the team's success demonstrated her ability to translate leadership principles observed at the executive level to her own management practice. Another critical dimension of Hiatt's pivoting skill was her ability to identify and seize unconventional opportunities. When Larry Page wanted to reconnect with Google's engineering talent, Hiatt volunteered to coordinate informal "Eng Chats" despite the logistical challenges. When Google acquired Motorola and inherited their private jet fleet, she took on the responsibility of evaluating aircraft, interviewing flight staff, and creating a corporate-use policy – all tasks far outside her official job description. By consistently saying "yes" to projects that stretched her abilities, Hiatt expanded her skill set while making herself indispensable to the organization. Perhaps most significantly, Hiatt learned to find value in failure and setbacks during transitions. After being invited to speak at conferences following her Google success, she experienced both triumph and humiliation. A disappointing reception at one large event in Milwaukee led to brutal feedback that initially devastated her. Yet this experience taught her a liberating truth: "I'm not for everyone, and I don't need to be." This realization – that rejection doesn't define her worth – freed her to pursue opportunities more aligned with her strengths and values, rather than seeking universal approval. Hiatt's pivoting philosophy can be summarized in a phrase she encountered at Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos's space company: "Gradatim Ferociter," meaning "step-by-step, ferociously." Successful transitions require both methodical planning and bold action, careful preparation and willingness to leap before feeling fully ready. By applying this approach throughout her career, Hiatt transformed potential career setbacks into opportunities for exponential growth.

Chapter 5: The Executive Partner: Empowering Tech Visionaries

At the heart of Ann Hiatt's remarkable career lies a unique talent for empowering visionary leaders to achieve their most ambitious goals. As executive business partner to three of technology's most influential CEOs, she developed a distinctive approach to collaboration that maximized their impact while creating opportunities for her own growth. This chapter explores the principles that made Hiatt an indispensable partner to these tech titans and how anyone can apply similar strategies to amplify their influence, regardless of their position. Hiatt's most fundamental insight was recognizing that her role wasn't merely administrative but catalytic – she was there to remove obstacles, anticipate needs, and create conditions for her executives to perform at their peak. With Jeff Bezos at Amazon, this meant managing his calendar to protect time for the quarterly thinking retreats that generated breakthrough innovations. For Marissa Mayer at Google, it involved streamlining communications and prioritizing speaking engagements to elevate her profile as the public face of Google products. With Eric Schmidt, it extended to representing him in meetings and making decisions on his behalf when he transitioned to executive chairman. The effectiveness of these partnerships stemmed from Hiatt's commitment to deep understanding – not just of the tasks at hand, but of her executives' thinking patterns, priorities, and unique strengths. She describes how she studied Jeff Bezos's decision-making process so thoroughly that she could anticipate his questions and concerns before they arose. She observed that Schmidt preferred to have a neutral person in meetings who could provide summary observations and proposed next steps. This level of attunement allowed her to function as an extension of her executives' capabilities rather than merely a support system. A critical element of Hiatt's success was her ability to manage up effectively. Rather than simply executing assigned tasks, she proactively identified opportunities to take responsibilities off her executives' plates that would simultaneously advance their priorities and develop her skills. When planning her promotion to chief of staff, Hiatt presented Schmidt with a spreadsheet showing three columns: current responsibilities, additional projects being handled, and potential impact if they added another team member. This data-driven approach aligned perfectly with Schmidt's decision-making style, making approval nearly automatic. High-stakes events provided particularly vivid demonstrations of Hiatt's partnership approach. When coordinating Google's participation in the 2012 London Olympics, she faced numerous logistical challenges – including being given a security badge that allowed her into venues but not to sit down in any meeting rooms. Rather than complaining about these limitations, she found creative workarounds, arriving early to test routes and security procedures, befriending key coordinators, and standing for hours during important negotiations to ensure Google's strategic goals were achieved. Her commitment to solutions rather than problems exemplified her philosophy: "I never wanted to just present a problem; I wanted to arrive with solutions." Perhaps most remarkably, Hiatt learned to contribute meaningfully in rooms where she might easily have felt intimidated or out of place. During a meeting with the newly crowned King of Spain, Felipe VI, at the royal palace in Madrid, Google's policy lead was initially horrified that Schmidt planned to bring Hiatt into the meeting. Yet Schmidt insisted, recognizing the value of her perspective. Similarly, when accompanying Schmidt to meetings with scientists and academics about artificial intelligence applications, Hiatt forced herself to speak within the first five minutes despite feeling unqualified, discovering that her non-expert observations often helped guide conversations in productive directions. This ability to add value in high-level contexts wasn't accidental but cultivated through consistent preparation and relationship building. Hiatt describes doing her "homework" – reading extensively, studying unfamiliar terminology, and developing deep understanding of strategic issues – before important meetings. She built relationships across organizational boundaries, creating what she called "friendship currency" that allowed her to accomplish things that would otherwise have been impossible. And she consistently demonstrated reliability in crisis situations, remaining calm and solution-focused when others might panic. The ultimate testament to Hiatt's effectiveness came when Eric Schmidt described her team as "embarrassingly good" compared to others around them. By applying principles of exceptional partnership – deep understanding, proactive problem-solving, meticulous preparation, and calm under pressure – she created a model of executive support that amplified the impact of already-influential leaders. In doing so, she not only advanced their visions but prepared herself for the next phase of her own journey.

Chapter 6: Taking the Leap: From Employee to Entrepreneur

After fifteen years supporting some of the world's most successful CEOs, Ann Hiatt faced her most daunting pivot yet: leaving the security of Google to launch her own consulting business. This transition, fraught with both professional and personal challenges, revealed that even with unparalleled preparation, entrepreneurship requires its own unique form of courage and resilience. The seeds of this transition were planted gradually. While helping Eric Schmidt chair an annual conference bringing together influential people from various industries, Hiatt began to recognize limitations in her ability to influence the event's direction despite years of involvement. "This was the first moment when I started to realize that my next growth steps might need to happen outside of Google," she reflects, though it would take five more years before she acted on this realization. Meanwhile, her personal life underwent seismic shifts – the end of her fifteen-year marriage prompted a period of soul-searching and reinvention. Inspired by the tragic death of a Google colleague who had lived life fearlessly, Hiatt began taking calculated risks to reinvent herself. She accepted a speaking invitation despite never having given a speech before, sold nearly all her possessions, and convinced Schmidt to let her transfer to Google's London office following Brexit. These steps, though difficult, created space for her to envision a future beyond the identity she had built at Google. "Limited options can bring out boldness and clarity that you might not dare to tap into otherwise," she observes, describing this period as being "halfway across the tightrope" with no advantage in turning back. When Hiatt finally left Google in September 2018, she faced the entrepreneur's quintessential challenge: establishing her value independent of institutional backing. Without the Google or Amazon names behind her, she initially struggled with feelings of smallness and invisibility. Her first consulting engagements revealed how much she had relied on corporate infrastructure – suddenly responsible for everything from accounting to travel planning, she found herself "scattered, overwhelmed, and ineffective" despite her extensive experience. A particularly instructive failure came when Hiatt advised two startup founders whose company was unraveling due to misaligned priorities. Despite her concerns about their approach to fundraising and product development, she allowed their skepticism to silence her rather than asserting her expertise. "This uncharacteristically withdrawn reaction to a challenge," she acknowledges, "came from my fears of how to be impactful alone, without the Google reputation and machine behind me." This experience prompted Hiatt to step back and create a formal business plan for herself – ironically, something she had done many times within established companies but had neglected in her own venture. She clarified her mission: "to create and empower underrepresented entrepreneurs globally to build the good we want to see in the world through actionable education and mentorship." With this North Star established, she could make clearer decisions about which clients to work with and how to structure her offerings. Significant breakthrough came when Chris, someone who had appreciated her SXSW conference speech, invited her to join the board of directors for his customer relationship management agency in Bristol, UK. Though initially feeling unqualified as an American with no expertise in marketing, Hiatt accepted the challenge. After a year on the board, feedback from other members was unanimous: speak up more! She had been waiting to feel like an expert before offering opinions, forgetting that her outsider perspective was precisely what made her valuable. This realization – that breadth of experience could be as valuable as depth of knowledge – marked a turning point in her entrepreneurial journey. The COVID-19 pandemic created yet another pivot point, stranding Hiatt in the United States while her client base remained primarily in Europe. Working across time zones to help businesses navigate unprecedented challenges, she discovered that what leaders needed most during crisis wasn't perfection but humanity – acknowledgment that things were difficult and a willingness to connect on a personal level. This insight informed her evolving approach to leadership consulting, emphasizing transparency and authenticity over flawless execution. Throughout this transition, Hiatt learned to value her unique contribution independent of title or company affiliation. She shifted from simply outworking everyone to "out-caring" them – prioritizing quality and insightfulness over hours contributed. She established clearer boundaries, preventing the "passion tax" that had led to burnout in previous roles. And she embraced what she calls the "Moonshot Mindset" – the belief that abilities, talents, and potential are not fixed but continually expandable through investment and experimentation. By applying the principles she had learned from tech titans to her own venture, Hiatt transformed from "the Google machine" (as one friend initially called her) to an entrepreneur with her own distinctive voice and vision. The journey required letting go of external validation and embracing the vulnerable process of building something new – a challenge familiar to entrepreneurs everywhere, regardless of their starting point.

Chapter 7: Leadership Lessons: Creating Your Own Opportunities

Throughout her journey from a first-generation college graduate to Silicon Valley insider and eventually entrepreneur, Ann Hiatt distilled powerful leadership lessons that can transform anyone's career trajectory. These principles, derived from observing and working alongside tech's most influential figures, offer a blueprint for creating opportunities regardless of one's starting point or current position. Perhaps Hiatt's most fundamental insight is that extraordinary success requires what she calls "betting on yourself" – making purposeful investments in your growth before results are guaranteed. She witnessed this principle in action when Jeff Bezos left his lucrative hedge fund position to start Amazon, when Marissa Mayer established the Associate Product Manager program against conventional wisdom, and when Eric Schmidt consistently said "yes" to unfamiliar challenges. These leaders shared an unwavering belief that although they hadn't mastered something yet, they could figure it out through determined effort and calculated risk-taking. This willingness to step beyond comfort zones was paired with what Hiatt terms "Gradatim Ferociter" – advancing step-by-step, ferociously. Rather than waiting until she felt fully prepared, Hiatt consistently volunteered for projects slightly beyond her current abilities, knowing that "the comfort of the good can rob us of the drive for the exceptional." When working on Amazon Prime's launch, she took on intern-level tasks just to be in the room where decisions were made. At Google, she offered to coordinate Women@Google talks without prior event management experience. Each small stretch created compounding growth that qualified her for increasingly significant responsibilities. A crucial element of Hiatt's approach was strategically aligning her personal growth with her organizations' most pressing needs. When seeking advancement, she would approach her manager six months to a year in advance with a specific, measurable list of contributions she would make to earn a promotion. This created a "win-win" where her development simultaneously solved problems for her executives. For example, when proposing to become Eric Schmidt's chief of staff – a role that didn't yet exist at Google – she presented a roadmap showing how this position would advance both their careers. Hiatt also developed specific practices for increasing influence without formal authority. She invested heavily in relationship-building across organizational boundaries, creating what she called "friendship currency" that could be leveraged when needed. She focused on presenting solutions rather than problems, thoroughly researching issues before bringing recommendations to executives. And she consistently demonstrated reliability in crisis situations, remaining calm when others might panic – a quality that earned her Jeff Bezos's respect after managing the aftermath of his helicopter crash. Perhaps most counterintuitively, Hiatt found that her greatest growth often came from embracing failure rather than avoiding it. From spilling a Diet Coke on her laptop in front of Larry Page to receiving brutal feedback after a conference speech, she learned to view setbacks as accelerated learning opportunities rather than personal indictments. This resilience allowed her to maintain forward momentum through numerous career transitions and personal challenges, including her divorce and eventual relocation to Spain. The culmination of these principles is what Hiatt calls the "Moonshot Mindset" – the belief that one's abilities, talents, and potential are not fixed but continuously expandable through deliberate investment and experimentation. This mindset liberates individuals from artificial limitations and opens possibilities that might otherwise seem unattainable. "There are small things we can do to reawaken this innate ability within each of us," she writes, "regardless of our current tolerance for risk." Throughout her narrative, Hiatt emphasizes that these principles aren't exclusive to Silicon Valley or tech industries but applicable in any context. The janitor who turned off half the lights in Amazon's vending machines, saving significant energy costs and winning the company's "Just Do It Award," demonstrated that impactful leadership can emerge from any position. The Spanish language student making "one million mistakes" on the path to fluency illustrates how consistent, imperfect effort eventually yields mastery. These examples underscore Hiatt's core message: exceptional results come not from innate genius but from purposeful practice, calculated risk-taking, and unwavering persistence. As Hiatt transitioned from corporate executive to entrepreneur, these principles became not just professional strategies but personal anchors. They guided her through the disorienting process of rebuilding her identity apart from prestigious employers, helping her discover that "the ability to claim my future has been inside of me all along." This realization – that one's value exists independent of titles or affiliations – represents the ultimate leadership lesson from her remarkable journey.

Summary

Ann Hiatt's extraordinary journey from an Air Force pilot's daughter to the right hand of tech titans carries a profound message: the greatest predictor of success isn't natural talent or prestigious credentials but the willingness to bet on yourself when opportunities arise. Through her fifteen years alongside Jeff Bezos, Marissa Mayer, and Eric Schmidt, Hiatt demonstrated that anyone can apply Silicon Valley's leadership principles to create their own opportunities, regardless of starting point or current position. Her story reveals that the path to significance often requires embracing discomfort, learning through failure, and aligning personal growth with organizational needs. What makes Hiatt's perspective particularly valuable is her emphasis on practical strategies over personality-driven success myths. Rather than attributing achievements to innate genius, she details specific approaches anyone can adopt: creating win-win situations that solve problems for managers while developing new skills; building relationship networks across organizational boundaries; presenting solutions rather than problems; and viewing setbacks as accelerated learning opportunities. These principles apply equally to career beginners seeking their first breakthrough and seasoned professionals navigating transitions. For those feeling stuck in unfulfilling roles or uncertain about their next steps, Hiatt's journey offers both inspiration and a concrete roadmap for crafting a more meaningful professional life – one where work becomes not just a job or career but a genuine calling aligned with personal values and strengths.

About Author

Loading...

Eric Schmidt

Read more

Related Books by Eric Schmidt

Loading...

The Age of AI

Eric Schmidt

And Our Human Future

★★★☆☆3.5

Loading...

Trillion Dollar Coach

Eric Schmidt

The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

★★★½☆4.0

Loading...

How Google Works

Eric Schmidt

An insider's guide to one of the biggest companies in the world

★★★★☆4.0