Care deeply about your work. Just don't become it.
There's a word for what comes next. Most people never learn it.
He threw his laptop across the room.
It landed in a trash can. And then, because this is the part that makes the story, he had to walk over and wipe the yogurt off it.
That story comes from Noah Levin. Former CPO, and part of the early team that built Amazon Fresh. By any measure, an impressive high-functioning leader. And in that moment, which he now describes as a turning point, completely derailed by a frustrating meeting where he was too invested.
He told me this story recently, laughing. He laughs about it now because of how much he's grown since.
I hear versions of that story more than you’d think.
Not always involving laptops and trash cans. But the same underlying thing:
A growth leader so invested in their work that a bad moment totally destabilizes them. A bad performance review feels like a verdict on who they are, not feedback they can use. Their sense of self gets so tangled up with the dashboard that every number becomes a judgement of their worth.
Caring is part of the job.
And you can’t do good work without genuinely giving a damn. But at some point, caring too much can be a bug, not a feature. That’s when it gets costly.
The leaders I've watched struggle most can't separate who they are from how the numbers look.
Every miss becomes evidence. And once it does, they start playing defense. They stop running experiments that might fail. They hedge. They position. And their best thinking gets spent on protecting themselves instead of building something special.
Someone eventually pulled Noah aside after the yogurt incident and gave him a word he’d never applied to his career: equanimity.
It’s an old concept (the Stoics were obsessed with it). Caring deeply about the work, without letting the outcome own your sense of self.
When Noah got it, he stopped needing every meeting to go his way in order to feel okay. He could take a hard piece of feedback, sit with it, and actually use it. He could have a down quarter and still trust his own judgment about what to do next.
He kept growing. He thinks this is why.
I’ve watched this play out across dozens of growth leaders I’ve coached. The ones who last, who keep getting better as the stakes get higher, have figured out some version of this. They care deeply.
And they’ve built enough distance between their identity and their results to stay clear-headed when things get hard.
Most people only figure that out after a moment they’d rather forget.
Noah went deep on this in our conversation this week, how he built it, what shifted, what still trips him up. Link below.
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Go deeper
Noah and I went deep on equanimity, identity, and how the best leaders stay grounded when the pressure gets real. Watch the full conversation here.
One more thing
Applications to the Growth Council close this Friday!
It’s a small, private group for Directors, VPs, and Heads of Growth who are done navigating this stuff alone. 2 calls a month, real challenges, honest feedback from people who actually understand your job.
If that sounds like what you’ve been looking for: → Apply here