I was 21 the first time someone told me at work that I think differently than most people.
I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.
Over the years I build more awareness to this and that has helped me with my communication skills, relationships, and in going after the big goals in my life.
There are two fundamental beliefs that I believe have made a big difference for me.
First is I believe that our brain is our greatest asset and our greatest limitation.
The way that we think about the world, ourselves, and our problems can greatly benefit us or limit us.
Second is that I am radically responsible for the life I live.
Today’s article is really about both of these beliefs and how if you make a slight shift in your understanding and perspective, you can drastically change the outcome of your career or your life.
When I talk to clients about this, I’ll often put this in the frame of employee mindset vs. CEO mindset.
The Employee Mindset vs. the CEO Mindset
Most of us look at our careers from an employee perspective. The same perspective we use internally at an organization is what we apply to our careers overall.
The employee mindset is reactive and limited. When you want to make a change in your career, you might look to external circumstances and use that to tell you what is possible for yourself.
For example: the job market, the economy, what is reasonable for your level, what you see other people doing that are on a similar path.
Then, you make your career decisions based on those factors.
You may think “it is what it is” and “there’s nothing I can do”.
This is like running your career and your life as an employee.
But an employee to who? Because in my mind, you are the CEO.
Let me explain.
The CEO mindset is different. It’s strategic. It has a mission and mission. It looks at external factors as problems to overcome or work through, as opposed to a limit on what is possible.
When you approach your career with a CEO mindset, you might think:
“What can I do?”, “What haven’t I tried?”
What Changes When You Think Like a CEO of Your Career
When your promotion gets denied
- Employee mindset: Wait for the next review cycle. Maybe look for another job.
- CEO mindset: Ask what’s missing. Diagnose the root cause. Find another path to the same goal.
When your ideal job isn’t posted
- Employee mindset: It doesn’t exist right now. I have to wait or settle.
- CEO mindset: Build the relationships and visibility that make the right people think of you — or create the role around your strengths.
When you’re overworked and burning out
- Employee mindset: This is just how the industry is. There’s nothing I can do if I want to get ahead.
- CEO mindset: Resource constraints need to be escalated. Boundaries make me a better contributor. My time is a finite and valuable asset. Build skills to delegate and work smarter.
The great thing is, that you can start to see improvement in your career by making this shift right now.
None of this requires a title change. It’s a decision about how you see yourself in relation to your career.
When I started my business, it wasn’t easy. When the market changed and it impacted my clients, it wasn’t easy. I had to adapt.
We aren’t eliminating the problems. We are solving them.
To get to the place where you even see these are solvable problems that may require different skills or strategies than what you have now, you have to expand to the CEO mindset. Of your career. And your life.
Why This Matters Specifically in Pharma and Biotech
This industry rewards people who treat their careers with the same rigor they bring to their science. If an experience failed or a batch was contaminated, you wouldn’t just take off your PPE and decide that “it is what it is”, right?
You’d run a CAPA — identify the root cause, implement a corrective action, and monitor for results.
Your career deserves the same methodology.
The women I’ve coached who made the fastest moves — promotions to senior director, roles created for them that didn’t exist before, offers that came without a single application — weren’t necessarily the most qualified people in the room.
They were the ones who stopped waiting to be discovered and started making strategic decisions about where they showed up, how they communicated their value, and what they said yes (and no) to.
That’s not luck. That’s CEO thinking.
Audit Your Thinking – Is it like an Employee or a CEO?
If you want to take an honest inventory of where you are right now, ask yourself:
- Do I believe my career results are in my control?
- When something doesn’t go my way, do I look for the root cause — or do I look for someone (or something) to blame?
- Am I intentional about how I spend my time, or am I constantly reactive to others’ priorities?
- Do I have clear non-negotiables — things I will and won’t accept in a role, on a team, from a manager?
- Am I thinking about the long-term trajectory of my career, or just surviving the current quarter?
If you answered no to more of those than you’d like, that’s data to consider. Where can you shift your perspective to take radical responsibility for your results – the good and the bad?
In Conclusion
If you don’t think your results are in your control, you won’t do the work needed to create the career you want.
What’s one place in your career right now where you’ve been thinking like an employee — and what would the CEO version of that decision look like?
Send me a message or share in the comments. I’d genuinely love to know.
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