4 Reasons Why Managers Fail & How To Avoid Them

Hosted by Jason Yoong and Marsden Kline

Thu, Apr 24, 2025

7:00 PM UTC (30 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

Free to join

88 students

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Featured in Lenny’s List

Stuck at Senior Manager - How to Break Through to Executive
Ethan Evans
View syllabus

What you'll learn

#1: Lack of self-awareness

We all have blind spots! You must solicit and internalize feedback.

#2: Lack of two-way empathy

You must help your team understand how to work with you and why it is a win / win to collaborate.

#3: Unproductive relationships with employees

Invest in your team and work hard for their success and growth.

#4: Absence of goal alignment

When scrambling to adapt to changing priorities, it is necessary to also continually re-adapt the employee focus.

(new) AI misalignment

Managers encourage their teams to use AI, but majority do not use it themselves.

Why this topic matters

When these 4 factors are addressed, the risk of manager failure drops from 48% to just 5%. For each reason, we will cover the Manager action and the IC (direct report) action.

You'll learn from

Jason Yoong

COO of Level Up (ex-Amazon)

Jason has run multiple $1B+ businesses across eCommerce, marketplaces, advertising, and media. He's led 40+ person organizations, owned department P&L, managed $400M+ marketing budgets for Fortune 100 entertainment (movies and TV) and consumer electronics clients, and served as an Advisory Board Member.


After leading and building at publicly traded companies Amazon, Dentsu Aegis, and Universal McCann (IPG), Jason joined the founding team of a venture-backed software startup and raised $8M seed.


Jason is now building Level Up: Your source for executive insights, high performance habits, and specific career growth actions with Ethan Evans (retired Amazon Vice President). He also serves on the Harvard Business Review advisory council and as a mentor at First Round Capital and Techstars.


>> Stuck at Senior Manager - How to Break Through to Executive next cohort starts April 26.

Marsden Kline

Co-founder MGMT Accelerator (ex-Goldman Sachs & Google)

Marsden co-founded the MGMT Accelerator with Dave. After decades of daydreaming about what owning their own company would look like, the answer was teaching something we naturally enjoy. Marsden studied engineering at UVa but always volunteered to present (instead of code). Her love for people and problem-solving has led to a range of experiences: from Goldman Sachs to sales at Google to real estate at Compass. The common thread? A commitment to understanding the people at the table to more efficiently solve for yes.


Mar: LinkedIn

Our weekly MGMT Playbook.


>> MGMT Accelerator next cohort starts May 13.

Course alumni from:

Netflix
J.P. Morgan
Stripe
McDonald's
Google

Learn directly from Jason Yoong and Marsden Kline

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