CHAPTER2Life at the Top

Executives are paid to be paranoid. Executives are territorial. Executives are impatient.

—Harold Fethe

Your success depends on getting through to C-level executives on their terms. Let’s be clear about this—presenting to C-levels (or other senior decision makers in your company) will simply be the most important presentations you will ever make in your entire life. Ever! In your entire life! Think about it. You probably will not go into politics or entertainment where you could be in front of huge audiences at say, the Democratic or Republican national conventions, or on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial speaking to hundreds of thousands of people. Nope. Probably not going to happen.

More likely

Yet your 45-minute ...

Get Speaking Up now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.