3 Business Lessons From Kamala Harris’ New Book

If you’re too busy reading about AI— and who isn’t—to tackle Kamala Harris’ campaign memoir 107 Days, you’re missing a lot of valuable business lessons.

After all, more and more these days, business is resembling a political campaign: taut, tough, tense. Growth is difficult and requires bold, decisive action. Social media can change anyone’s fortune overnight. AI is forcing leaders to make rapid decisions. The average tenure of a CMO, according to one study is down to 18 months. 

With that in mind, here are 3 business lessons from the Veep’s book:

Don’t be afraid to break up with the past

When Harris was asked on The View what she would do differently than President Biden, she turned a softball question into a foul ball by responding: “There’s not a thing that comes to mind.”

In a post-defeat return visit to The View she said “I didn’t fully appreciate how much people wanted to know there was a difference between me and President Biden. I thought it was obvious, and I didn’t want to offer a difference in a way that would be received or suggested to be a criticism.”

This misjudgment was based on a failure to read the public.

Business leaders are at risk of making the same mistake, through a combination of insulation, isolation, and simply a lack of instinct, and those stepping into new C-level jobs often find themselves in the Harris bind—especially if they are internal promotions.  

Of course, it’s not a good look to effectively say, “All those years I was working for Joe, I secretly thought he was a dope.” But there is a difference between throwing someone under the bus, which can look petty, and continuing to mindlessly drive the bus on the same route.

There are strategically graceful ways to respect a predecessor while demarcating a new chapter.

Prepare to answer tough questions

“I wish I could have gotten the message across that there isn’t a distinction between ‘they/them’ and ‘you’” Harris writes. “The pronoun that matters is ‘we.’ ‘We the people.’”

Semafor points how that this lack of a plan “revealed how unready Democrats were to defend transgender rights in a campaign.”

It seems like they didn’t “steelman” the GOPs potential arguments; I wrote about the need to state your opponent’s position in the strongest possible terms in a recent Inc. column.

Memo to business leaders: Be prepared to deal, instantly, with multiple asymmetric attacks—on social media, from NGOs, from activists. Use responses that tie back to your strong and simple promise. When your company and your brands lack that non-negotiable nucleus, your defenses will be scattershot—neither coherent nor cohesive.

No time is no excuse

Harris’ book is titled 107 Days for a reason. She is blaming the shortest campaign in modern American history for her loss. That’s a running theme.

“We’re on a journey” is the knee-jerk response to things taking too long. Meanwhile, Zohran Mamdani, who is poised to become the next mayor of New York, flew from a barely registering 8 percent in the polls in late May to a projected victory in about a month.  

That’s less than a third of the time Harris had. He had to build an organization; she had the entirety of the Democratic national apparatus at her disposal.

Time is running out everywhere—whether you’re a marketer struggling to keep pace with the rushing currents of change in digital media and influencer marketing, or an operational leader juggling the FOMO of AI, fear of missing out, with FOJI, fear of jumping in.

Don’t make time your excuse; make it your friend.

Visuals matter

There are other business nuggets in Harris’ memoir, like her regrets about her first post-convention interview, which she conducted with Tim Walz. “She wasn’t happy with an alignment of chairs that emphasized Walz’s physical stature over hers.”

Skip the book, unless you are a true political junkie, and focus on the clear and urgent messages for business leaders and c-suite executives: Don’t make excuses, have a unique perspective, and be prepared to answer tough questions.