If you want to sound more senior in your next interview, one of the easiest ways is to review your stories to see how much of your content focuses on operational details vs strategic thinking.
Because operational details, aka reciting tactical steps, alone does not demonstrate your leadership.
Let’s compare an operational-focused story to a strategy-focused one:
1️⃣ Operations-focused Story:
“I evaluated the current onboarding process, found we were slower than competitors, and streamlined from 100 to 30 parameters.
To get buy-in, I presented the new framework to 6 VPs and 80 stakeholders.”
This story does a decent job of outlining the tactical steps taken. But, it lacks a clear strategic framing and focus on the higher-level business positioning.
2️⃣ Strategy-focused Story:
“Recognizing onboarding was a bottleneck, I developed a tiered framework to prioritize high-value partners.
Rather than a one-size-fits-all onboarding workflow, I developed a tiered framework to prioritize partners based on their potential revenue and strategic value to the business.
For example, we focused on Caribbean chains to expand in Latin America, even if short-term revenue was lower.”
Notice how this version starts by framing the strategic importance of the onboarding challenge, then dives into the specific strategic choices made (e.g. tiered prioritization, Latin American expansion) and the rationale behind them?
Why Strategic Storytelling Matters
When you shift the focus of your story to strategy over operations, you can more effectively demonstrate your ability to think holistically about the business, make tough decisions, and drive impactful outcomes.
Rather than simply reciting the operational steps you took, focus on communicating the strategic context behind those steps.
This is one of the easiest ways to sound more “strategic and senior”, because you have the breadth of perspective and leadership abilities required for more senior roles.
It also has a nice side effect of making your stories more memorable, as you’re focusing on the strategic choices and their rationale rather than just the tactical execution.
✅ Next Steps for You
Your next steps are:
- Review your stories to see how much of your content focuses on operational details vs strategic thinking.
- Shift your storytelling to be more strategy-focused vs operations-focused.
This technique has worked well for my clients.
Would you like to give this a try?
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2025 is going well for my clients. They have already landed offers from Walmart, Tesla, Stripe, Intuit, Microsoft, and Tubi in Staff, Principal, GPM, and Director of Product roles with TC up to $728K.
Would you like to make your success story the next one? 🚀
The old way of prepping for L6+ and leadership interviews can stretch your prep longer than needed with endless mocks, where delaying your time-to-offer means losing $10K+ every week.
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