Rob Walling

And with that, let's dive into my first reader question.

Since I didn't get permission in advance from everyone who responded to me, I'm going to leave folks anonymous.

But my first question asker responded to, again, to this email about task level, owner level, and project level thinkers.

And actually, let me do a quick definition of those three levels in case you haven't read the book or you missed the podcast episode.

So I have a mental framework about different levels of ability with folks who you work with.

Most people, especially when they start out earlier in their career, are task-level thinkers, meaning you hand them a task and usually you have to give them some guidance around it.

And sometimes you don't and they can figure it out.

But they work on that task, then they return the results to you, and then they move on to the next task that you've assigned them.

Project-level thinkers are a level above that, and those are folks who can manage an entire project with potentially conflicting priorities, a lot more going on, and they can keep it driving forward.

Sometimes they're managing task-level thinkers, or at least driving, even if they're not directly managing, they're driving one or more task-level thinkers to help deliver the project.

There's obviously a lot more complexity and a lot more skills needed to manage projects.

And I think most people, again, when they first start out in their career and they're an IC or an individual contributor, they are there to do tasks.

And at a certain point, you get good enough that you can start managing projects.

A lot of people, though, I don't think they make it to this next level, the third level, which is owner-level thinkers.

You could call this a founder-level thinker.

You could call this an executive-level thinker.

But I call it owner-level.

And I think of it like a task-level thinker probably thinks ahead a few hours or maybe, depending on the task, a day or two.

I think a project-level thinker is thinking ahead weeks, maybe a few months, again, depending on the size and complexity of the project.

And an owner-level thinker might be thinking ahead six months, 12 months, two years, thinking about everything that's going on at a company,