Beyond Incremental... Breakthrough Leadership
The leadership newsletter for product leaders who want breakthrough impact, not incremental improvements. Weekly frameworks to multiply your influence and accelerate your career.
🔹 Your team is busy. Nothing's getting done. Here's why.
Leadership Advantage - Issue 34 by Andrea Michalek They told me I’d be fine in 72 hours. It took 3 years. Two prescription pills triggered a brain injury that turned my world sideways. Doctors called it a rare side effect. They said the symptoms would fade once the drugs were out of my system. They were wrong. Progress during my recovery came unpredictably: one skill returning as another slipped away. While some of my symptoms improved (like my ability to speak), others worsened (like my...
🔹 The team that changed how I lead
Leadership Advantage - Issue 33 by Andrea Michalek I used to preach that solo work was the future. Then I built a team I’d stake my career on, and it changed how I see leadership forever. Every leader’s real job is this: Build the best team you’ve ever been a part of. Anything less is falling short. So the question becomes: What would you change if THAT was your primary goal? Ask yourself: Is the day-to-day work of your team meaningful? Are they burning energy on the machinery of work instead...
🔹 The Performance Paradox: Why Your Best Intentions Are Sabotaging Breakthrough Results
Leadership Advantage - Issue 32 by Andrea Michalek You know you need to innovate faster, but you feel trapped in systems that demand certainty for breakthrough decisions. What’s worse, these systems were built with the best intentions and stifle breakthrough innovation while keeping people feeling productive and responsible. I’ve seen this play out in my own teams, and in dozens of leaders I’ve coached. Here's how to recognize the traps The Analysis Trap: You mistake thorough planning for...
🔹 (Re)discovering joy in leadership
Leadership Advantage - Issue 31 by Andrea Michalek I built my career on grit and strategy. But the biggest breakthroughs came when joy was in the room, and my team actually enjoyed the climb. Early in my leadership journey, I championed 3 principles: Improve Effort to Effect Ratio Bring Ideas to Reality Have Fun That third one? I'd completely lost sight of it. This weekend, reconnecting with old friends reminded me: the best conversations happen when we’re laughing. The deepest connections...
🔹 Being indispensable is a leadership trap
Leadership Advantage - Issue 30 by Andrea Michalek If your team can’t think strategically without you, that is not a compliment. It is a warning sign. This is the essence of what I call The Context Keeper Trap, one of the most common ways capable product leaders unintentionally limit their impact. On the surface, it looks like leadership: you are in every pivotal meeting, connecting execution to vision, guiding trade-offs, representing the product strategy, keeping priorities aligned. But...
🔹 The Professional Autopilot Trap
Leadership Advantage - Issue 29 by Andrea Michalek Autopilot doesn’t look like failure. It looks like plateaued growth, endless meetings, and a calendar so full of escalations you can’t remember the last time you shaped the market instead of reacting to it. You’re not broken.You’re not failing.You’re not even underperforming. You’re hitting quarterly targets.Your team respects you.Stakeholders know they can count on you. By every traditional measure, you’re succeeding. But here’s the part...
🔹 The framework I've been building with you (revealed)
Leadership Advantage - Issue 28 by Andrea Michalek Hello my friends! Beyond Incremental: The Journey Revealed A Behind-the-Scenes Look at 12 Weeks of Writing in Public For the past 12 weeks, you’ve been receiving newsletters about leadership breakthroughs, scaling yourself, and creating category-defining impact. Last week, I mentioned I was writing a book. Today, I want to show you what we’ve built together. Every newsletter has been a piece of a larger puzzle - the Beyond Incremental...
🔹 Faster, cheaper, prettier… and still irrelevant
Leadership Advantage - Issue 27 by Andrea Michalek You don’t win by building a better product than the competition. You win by creating a space where competition doesn’t exist. That’s category creation: not improving what's already there, but building the market around a problem only you can solve. Most product leaders aren’t doing this.They’re professional optimizers. Making things faster, cheaper, prettier… and call it breakthrough thinking. Real category creators don’t optimize. They...
🔹 The hidden stage of leadership no one warns you about
Leadership Advantage - Issue 26 by Andrea Michalek Most senior product leaders are one promotion away from losing the passion that made them successful. In over 100 leadership coaching sessions, I’ve seen the same shift: more meetings, less making. Here’s how to break that cycle. When I was a first-time founder learning about venture capital, I dove into pre-money and post-money valuations, cap tables, and more. I expected to learn about money, not mental health, and that disconnect taught me...
🔹 Natural Authority: The Leadership Skill No One Taught You
Leadership Advantage - Issue 25 by Andrea Michalek Ever feel like you’re doing great work but still not getting noticed? You’re not alone, and the fix isn’t a new title. It’s something deeper. I once had a mentee who wanted a promotion and a bigger team. I asked why. What about his current role wasn’t satisfying? Was it the pay? What was driving him? He smiled. “Of course I’d be happy making more, but that’s not it.I want what you have. I want more power.”I looked back at him, confused,...
The leadership newsletter for product leaders who want breakthrough impact, not incremental improvements. Weekly frameworks to multiply your influence and accelerate your career.