Ada Chen Rekhi
Ada Chen Rekhi is an executive coach and co-founder of Notejoy. She helps founders scale themselves alongside their teams. She has over a decade of experience leading teams through periods of rapid transition, from the chaos of founding early-stage startups to leadership roles in growing SurveyMonkey and LinkedIn.
Career Skills
Coaching is most effective when there is a strong personal connection and 'vibe' rather than just matching credentials.
"If you're thinking about getting a coach... talk to two or three different coaches. And really get a sense of their vibe and how well you get to know them... half of people that founder their coach li..."
Early career should focus on 'exploration' with a growth mindset to find fit, followed by 'exploitation' to intentionally deepen specific skills needed for long-term goals.
"My early career was pretty wild... it really comes down in a nutshell to this career concept of explore and exploit... You're either in a mode of explorer where you have a bunch of unknowns and you're..."
Avoid 'boiling the frog' by monitoring whether your current environment still provides learning and growth or if you are staying due to inertia.
"It's really easy to be a victim of inertia. It's really easy for all of us to be the frog where there are little things that make us uncomfortable, and we sit with them... you really have to be aware..."
Hiring & Teams Skills
Successful high-stakes partnerships (like co-founders) require clear domain separation and a commitment to 'most respectful interpretation' during conflict.
"We had a very, very good set of complimentary domains and skillsets, so we had really clear decision making rights... the ability to be really truth seeking and take the most respectful interpretation..."
Leadership Skills
Managers often avoid giving sensitive but critical feedback on presence and perception, which can stall a high-performer's career.
"It's so unsafe for your manager to turn to a young woman on the team and say, 'Here, let me give you feedback on your physical appearance, and how it affects your competence and how you're perceived i..."
Use a structured 'Curiosity Loop' to gather contextual advice from a curated group to fight the bias of generic, non-contextual advice.
"A curiosity loop is essentially going to a whole bunch of people. In this case, I sent out an email very quickly to about 10 or 11 people and asking them, 'Hey, here are nine topics for Lenny's Podcas..."
Use a personal values stack-rank as an 'internal scorecard' to evaluate if major life and career decisions align with your core identity.
"I looked at those values and I said, 'Well, if I draw a straight line from where I am right now and just extend it forward and play the rest of the movie as it plays out, given the current plot line,..."
Marketing Skills
Consistency in content creation is a 'vegetable'—a difficult task that requires repeated exposure to overcome the initial discomfort and lack of skill.
"I know a lot of people have talked about doing a LinkedIn 30. So 30 days of posting something on LinkedIn in terms of content every day for 30 days straight, and just getting past that barrier of shar..."
Product Management Skills
Overcome 'productive procrastination' by committing to just five minutes of your most important task early in the day.
"Figure out, maybe the night before, the one thing that you want to get done in your day, and then at the earliest opportunity, just try to give yourself five minutes on it."