Leading Others - KeynesYouDigIt/Knowledge GitHub Wiki

What is leadership?

Leadership is a relationship in a context. Leadership is about setting aside personal concerns for a common goal. You can’t delegate a management task, and you can’t give someone your leadership. Leaders persuade rather than dominate. A leader is someone who runs toward danger, not away from it. Leadership is placing yourself in between the staff and danger. The natural qualities of a leader are a deep sense of purpose and a passion for improvement- both of those connect deeply with followers. A servant leader is a guide, not a director. Within a turbulent organization, a leader can make people feel safe. Leadership is a choice, not a position. You can get people to do what you say, but that’s not the same as following you. The only qualification for being a leader is having followers. One of the most important leadership traits is to be forward-looking. The cost of leadership is self-interest. Great leaders fight entropy. Leaders are “hope dealers.” Leadership is doing what managers say is impossible. Collaborative leaders connect disparate kinds of people, inside and outside the organization. They engage people who are different, they don’t try to homogenize them. Leaders wield influence, not authority. Leaders and never tired or hungry- leaders eat last. Influence is more important to leadership than authority is. Great leadership is scarce.

Management

If your reason for being a manager is power or money, your leadership will inevitably be about you. Being a manager means a loss of tribe and a loss of simplicity (your goals become subordinate to the organizations). As a manager, acknowledge your need for:

Achievement- It comes from helping others achieve
Power- Exercise “social power” to better others
Affiliation- Seek out peers, showcase successes

Managers can be decision bottlenecks. Ask “What’s stopping you from solving this yourself?” Engagement is required for something to be successful. Orchestrating decisions, rather than them making them yourself, means making the team sort it out. A maximum effective span for a manager is 5-7 people. Managers should be selected, coached, supported, and held accountable. Weak staff are attracted to weak managers.

Teams

An organization needs:

A purpose
Practical values to achieve that purpose
Criteria for ethical decision-making

Measurements

Teams aren’t like families- from an anthropological standpoint, they are families. Not all teams need to be long-lived. Teams needs different people- gurus and kommisars. Diverse teams have different skills, perspectives, and styles (numbers vs. words, etc.). Intensity drives team performance, and strong collaborations get things done. Reward truth-telling. Some jobs at the boundaries of the team are:

Task coordinator with other teams
Ambassador (PR)
Scout (prevent surprises, capitalize on opportunities)

When building a team, figure out how you want them to work together first. Allow them to get to know each other. Show your values, show them what success looks like. Set or clarify goals. Score an early win together. Understand and expose different working styles. When starting a virtual team:

Let them form relationships
Make a plan for them to meet 10-15 people in the company in the first two weeks
Ask them for their observations, and build your “fresh eyes” data about the company
Aim to achieve a small but significant goal in the first 2 months
Consider having an “always on” video screen

Rebuild the team when people come and go- handle the “task” side of things changing and the human side. Manage the boundaries around your team- communication in and out. Have “talking points” about your work to the staff outside the team. You can encourage empathy by having everyone do a skit about their work day to give everyone an idea of what’s on their plate. Have everyone rate the team in one area, and use it as a basis for change. Ask them how you can improve it.

Hiring

Hire for culture above ability. Make prospective leaders role play to demonstrate their capacity. Charisma dilutes judgment. The approval of others is addictive- it can distract from accomplishing your goals. It fosters narcissism, and can disguise psychopathy. Ergo, don’t select leaders based on your gut, base it on tools. Limit “airtime,” and look for hidden talent. Recruit for the right values first, because you can’t train that into someone. When interviewing, prepare 4 question for each of these, and aim for specific (rather than general) information:

Capability- have they done something like this in the past?
Commitment- have they had the drive to do something like this in the past?
Chemistry- will they fit?

During an interview, build rapport, talk about the structure of the interview, explain that they’ll get to ask questions at the end, and control for bias. When interviewing, what elements of your company and culture are you looking for? Don’t hire the perfect candidate- look for someone who’s capable, not the top talent. Focus on training and retention. Hunt for people, don’t just administer tests to applicants. Look for fresh, overlooked talent. Put your managers through extensive training. Test for people’s ability to improvise. Hire for attitude over aptitude. Some interview questions:

Have you worked with (customer) before?
Scenario questions
Tell me about yourself (look for spin-off questions)
Preference for team vs. individual work
Are you willing to learn? (can use later on as a commitment)
Tell me about an ethical issue you handled
When did your behavior affect your team?
How do you feel about leadership?
When did you lead a team to a goal?

Success at one level is neither indicative nor predictive of success at another.

How To Be a Good Leader

Ask yourself what your employees need to be successful. What does the organization need to provide? Be intense during peacetime, calm during war. If you think your people are disposable, they will reciprocate. We rise or fall to the level of our aspirations. High aspirations are creating the future, transforming, disrupting, focusing on the mission, and being unreasonable. If you put your customers before your employees, you will have fast growth… but how long will it last? The goal is to build something that will last. Don’t tell people your vision- create it together. Start with the end in mind- don’t think of the tasks, think of what they’re enabling. Adapt to the changing weather, but know what direction you’re going. Praise effort, not results. Don’t overpraise success- this should be the result of a systemic success, not an individual one. You also send the message that failure isn’t rewarded. Try to make this a great year to look back on. Take the blame, share the praise. Coach people through problems as a partner. It’s not a master/slave relationship. “Respond” to things, never “react” to them. Work one on one with individuals. Don’t give them pep talks- they notice what you do, not what you say. Don’t pass the buck- own your choices. Separate your identity from the performance of the team. Build systems that are less dependent on leaders. If you don’t run your organization, your boss will, and you won’t be able to create your bubble of excellence. Doing someone’s job for them cripples them. Infect others with your attitude. Have a deputy to make sure that things are happening, and can run things when you aren’t there. Leaders should:

Get away from email and walk around
Figure out what’s going on in the organization
Discover the truth
Find problems before they’re problems
Compliment people
Coordinate with other parts of the organization
Spend time with their boss and boss’s boss
Figure out where they want to go

Know your people’s hobbies and career aspirations. Share credit with with people. Make time away from operational matters for envisioning. Be a coach and a teacher, not the person with all the answers. Don’t make it scary to tell you the truth. Leadership styles are dependent on the situation and the audience- never on your feelings. People will watch all of your non-verbal queues when you respond to something. Doing work reduces your effectiveness as a leader and disempowers the team. As a leader, you need to set aside time to think. Ask yourself where you can uniquely add value. Don’t be a diminisher, be a multiplier.

Diminishers are:

Empire builders
Know it alls
Decision makers
Micromanagers
Tyrants

Multipliers are:

Talent magnets
Liberators
Challengers
Debate makers
Investors

You can accidentally become a diminisher if you:

Are too visionary, without leaving enough room for other to contribute
Talk too much- consider using poker chips to control your talking time
Have too many ideas

The only person who needs to know you did your job well is you. Some of your wins won’t be recognized, and some victories won’t result in wins. Don’t work people harder to get something accomplished- change what the goal is. Give employees easy wins. Find opportunities for them to succeed. Good questions for leaders:

What needs to happen to get where we need to go?
Where is there confusion?
What’s vague that I can clarify or debunk?
What are people taking for granted?

Practice making good choices and holding yourself accountable. 6 Different leadership styles:

Coercive- Quick, but erodes motivation
Authoritative- Based on expertise, but doesn’t work if employees know more than you
Affiliative- Builds the team, but it’s slow
Democratic- Good for idea generation and buy-in, but might stall out on decisions
Pace-setting- Goals are clear, but it’s not very creative
Coaching- Develops others

Biggest predictor of success for an employee is “My boss cares about me and my career.” You can outsource work, but not responsibility. Don’t cling to a successful formula. Lone heroes become dead heroes fast. Wishfulness and yesmanship destroy companies. Wishfulness is believing whatever data supports your views, and yesmanship is agreeing with leadership out of fear. Yesmanship enables wishfulness, and eventually the yes men climb the ladder high enough to break the company. The opposite principles are trust and respect. Cherish dissenters and embrace conflict. Figure out what winning look like for the organization, and decide how you want to show up (define personal success). Spend 15 minutes reflecting at the end of every day, and 1 hour at the end of every week. At the beginning of each day, set your intention for the day. Reflect on:

It- the tasks
We- the relationships
I- your attitude about these things

Help your people find what they are uniquely good at, and help them be authentic. Focus on developing people. People are more committed to things they have ownership over. Trust people to make important decisions. Letting people lead takes great management and coaching. Find people’s strengths, and play to them. The dark side of leadership is that all the qualities that make great leaders also make terrible ones in extremes. Having a hard edge and being ruthless are very close.

High aspirations can fuel the need to defeat others
Courage can turn into going it alone
Resilience can mean sticking with the wrong fight
Positivity needs to be anchored to reality
Collaboration isn’t the same as popularity, and requires challenging people
Accountability doesn’t mean you’re responsible for everything
Growth can’t come at the cost of achievement

Your team will test you, and watch to see if you hold the line. You can drown out an employee’s sense of purpose by doing too much. Your job is to bring out the answers in others, not to give them answers. When balancing things like honesty and compassion, or practicality and vision, anything outside of optimal is toxic. Help them build the skills they would need for any future.

Influence

People naturally want to repay favors. What currency do they value? What do you? Fear works in the short-term, but it doesn’t have as high a potential as empowerment does (a “J” shaped curve). Fear invokes fight-or-flight responses. To build trust, listen and align. Listening is flattering. You’re giving up your time to them. Build reciprocity by starting with small commitments. Every employee is a category of one. The only person with the time to understand them and the authority to improve their lives is their manager. This takes regular conversations. It makes employees not want to let you down. Maintaining influence without authority is one of the challenges of flat organizational structures. Network, and look for people who are portals to other networks. Learn persuasion and negotiation. Consult with others, rather than dictating a plan. Build coalitions and break silos. As a company, foster an environment where this can take hold- doubly so if the teams are virtual. Removing personal interest inspires trust.

Fear

Types of risk:

Rational
Personal - The fear of failure
Ambiguity- Uncertainty, unknowns, opportunities

If you fear that something is dangerous, can you reduce the danger or your fear? You can cover for your fears, or you can connect with them. One way to reduce your fear of something is to create a bigger fear (eg. excommunication). Manage your fear- don’t ignore it. Think of what the best and worst outcomes are.

Firing

Don’t fire someone for performance reasons- would you fire one of your children for not meeting expectations? Furloughs are an alternative to layoffs. Don’t fire people or lay them off without notice. In economic decline, hoard labor for the inevitable bounce-back. If the company wants loyalty from people, it needs to demonstrate that first. You reduce the need for panic layoffs by running lean and staffing conservatively in the first place. You can also double-down on it being openly temporary, but that’s expensive to maintain and has very high recruiting costs. You can’t expect loyal employees at a disloyal company.

Optimism & Pessimism

Humor is an act of defiance. Learned helplessness can be overcome by optimism. Resilient people accept reality, believe life is meaningful, and have the ability to improvise. When striving for the impossible, look for ways to even the odds. Optimists outperform pessimists because they believe it’s possible to do so. People don’t like following pessimistic leaders. Cynicism is organizational cancer. Control your self-talk. Recognize that you have a choice, challenge the thought, copy your role models. Recognize that adversity is temporary, not permanent. Helping others helps you stay positive. “It’ll be better in the morning” isn’t a prediction, it’s an attitude. Between cynicism and arrogance, you can either lay down (“we tried and it didn’t work”), or you can take the high road and balance between the two. Hope is not a plan- be honest, but faithful. “Lucky” people have:

Humility- The root of self-awareness
Curiosity- A byproduct of humility
Optimism- The belief that winning is possible

Emotions

You can love something without liking it all the time. You control your mind- choose your attitude. Wear “the mask of leadership.” 3 deep breaths will short-circuit an amygdala hijack. Choose your reactions- how would a third-party interpret this? What impression do you want to make? Don’t use logic to fight emotions. Is the voice in your head useful to you right now? It’s not a matter of being positive or negative. We all need a nice coach and a tough coach- which one is better for you right now? Drinking too much is a symptom of stress. Not sleeping enough is the equivalent of being drunk on the job. Pressure is good, stress is bad- the difference between them is the level of control. Ambiverts are “bilingual” introverts/extroverts. They don’t have a default mode, they’re comfortable socially or alone, and they know which mode to pick for a situation. Getting anxious floods you with cortisol, which makes others anxious too. Unsafe work environments make you swim in cortisol. Oxytocin (generosity) will extinguish dopamine (performance). People value time more than money. Giving people your time and energy gives them oxytocin, which makes both of you more generous.

Some mental prisons:

Success
The Past
Performance (Tyranny of the served market)

Multitasking is linked with lower productivity, lower creativity, impaired decision-making, higher stress, and adrenaline addiction. Instead, frequently set and update priorities, focus on what matters most, and take a lot of “brain breaks.” Yelling at people is a sign of weakness.

Conflict

Conflicts happen because of a difference in styles, ideas, or anger. Conflicts are red flags, not something dodge. They indicate a problem in the system. Look for opportunities to find the common interest between two different positions. Unnamed conflicts don’t go away. Win friends, not arguments.

Pay

Money isn’t connected to people’s drive to work hard, and working hard doesn’t get you higher pay. People don’t feel good about being had for a bargain. If you’re cheap with money, you’re inviting people to be cheap with their effort. Employees need to believe you also care about their financial best interests. Pay should be fair, procedurally justified, anchored in defined, logical, and ultimate reasonable outcomes. Nothing short of a true interest in paying employees generously takes the heat off. Pay secrecy has more downside than up.

Vision & Mission

Vision and metrics are important because you can only see the things that you have words for. To achieve your 10 year vision, figure out:

What you need to do to get there
What the milestones at 1, 3, and 5 years are
What you can do right now

You can’t create the future if you believe you’re a victim. Vision is:

Where we are
Where we’re going
How we’ll get there
How you’ll help

Your vision goes farther out the higher up the organization you go. Your vision should reflect your own aspirations. If you tie what you’re doing to a higher mission and purpose, you will last much longer. Paint the vision of what could be to your people. Inspire them to see themselves as more. People strongly value the missions of the organizations they work for. They could work anywhere- why here? Alignment with the mission is twice as powerful as pay for retention. It’s the thing that gets them out of bed in the morning. As a leader, you don’t need to give the work meaning, just don’t extinguish it. There’s a difference between sloganeering the meaning, and helping people see the connection between their work and the mission. You can’t just hand people values- they have them or they don’t. The highest form of meaning is working for a cause, but it requires leaders who believe in that cause too. Everyone needs to know and align with the mission statement. You don’t ride a horse by telling it where to put its feet- you look to the future. Martin Luther King’s Jr.’s speech wasn’t called “I have a plan.” People are driven by purpose, not results. People don’t buy what you make, they buy why you make it. People see the future by looking at the past. Build their vision of the future by incrementally keeping bigger and bigger promises.

Meetings

When designing meeting agendas:

Ask for input
Only do things that affect the whole team
Agenda topics should be phrased as questions
Is the purpose to share information, seek input, or make a decision?
Apply a process to each topic- __ amount of time to define, debate, etc.
Retro the meeting at the end

Most meetings are memorials to dead problems. Most teams are defined by their meetings- it may be the only time they’re all working together. Meetings revise, update, or add to the team’s shared knowledge. Meetings are one of the places where leadership happens. Before booking a meeting, ask what happens if you don’t have it. People are generally more energetic and creative at the beginning of a meeting than at the end of it. As the chair of a meeting, try to limit your interactions to a sentence at a time. Try putting other people in charge of parts of the meeting. A meeting needs to achieve something. Encourage equal participation- actively draw out people. Be careful about offering your input too soon. You can color people’s responses. In a discussion, try posting before you discuss. Do all debating and ideation simultaneously by having everyone write down their responses at the same time. Consider formally assigning someone to be the devil’s advocate. Try leading a meeting solely with questions.

Office Politics

Don’t be the boss’s pet; be everyone’s pet. When you react strongly to office politics, start by questioning your reaction. What else is there to the story? Is it really about you? Is this a good conflict? Take charge of your fate and stay calm. Maybe your boss doesn’t hate you; maybe they’re just not good at their job. Nothing is secret anymore, and news travels fast. Prospects can research you. It’s damaging to not tell your employees what’s going on- it turns work into “Spy vs. Spy.” You can’t tell employees not to post something. Rumors and online reviews will fill any vacuum. If you honestly don’t know, show what you have, and talk about how you’ll make decisions. The rules of survival and success are different at different levels of the organization.

Delegation

Delegation is the key to moving from an operational manager to a strategic one. Not delegating makes you the bottleneck in every process. Look for what will maximize your time. What would be a stretch for someone? Distinguish the style of the results you get from their quality. Delegation is what lets you go home. After delegating, give some coaching, but back off once you start seeing progress. People don’t delegate because they think they are too busy or that it’s more efficient to do it themselves. In reality, they’re often hoarding work. If you’re working really hard and feel indispensable, you’re probably not delegating enough. Giving up being the “go-to person” takes confidence in yourself. Don’t dole out tasks, hand over responsibility. Track how you spend your days, and look for lower-leverage tasks. Tell your people to call you out for not delegating. Coach, empower, and forgive mistakes. Become replaceable. Micromanagers always work too much and can’t take on more tasks. When delegating, first identify:

Capability- can they?
Desire- how badly do they want it?
Task ownership- will they own it?

Delegating creates more hours in the day. You might be a micromanager if you’re never quite satisfied, you require frequent updates from your people, and you make a lot of little corrections. Give someone the “what” to do, not the “how.” Fear of failure is where micromanagement comes from- expect to win!

Decisions

Let go of perfection (“right”), aim for good. Everyone doesn’t have to like the decisions you make, but give everyone a fair hearing. Voting can fracture a decision. Factor people’s need for autonomy and control into decisions. If you want to be the expert in a decision-making scenario, relinquish your leadership for that discussion. Ask “Why wouldn’t we want to move forward with this?” after making a decision. Debates either happen before or after a decision, but they always happen.

When making decisions:

Defend against your personal biases
Become aware of your personal baggage
Run a premortem on your decision
Ask yourself if you actually know what you’re doing
Think before you leap
Play devil’s advocate

Some decision-making criteria:

How much time do you have?
Who has expertise?
Is growing people a goal?
How much buy-in do you need?
How much creativity is required?

Personal Development

See others who perform well as role models, not competitors. Don’t be awed by others- you can do it too. Play to your strengths rather than developing your weaknesses. If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you. Someone who says “you can’t do that” is really saying that they can’t do it. Don’t manage work/life balance, compartmentalize your life better. Disconnect your personal self from your professional self. The need to look smart gets in the way of learning. Succeeding and failing fast is the easiest way to accelerate your career. You can’t reach goals from your comfort zone. People who “know” things can’t learn things. Character is integrity, responsibility, forgiveness, compassion. Don’t rely on your employer, rely on your employability. Perfectionism leads to the loss of self-esteem and avoidance of challenge. Fear of losing leads to a fear of growth. Self awareness is the key to building character.

Acknowledge invitations to change
Discover what you want to change
Find fuel for change (look to your vision)
Identify the keystone change
Disarm your security system
Rewire your brain by celebrating successes

There’s 3 zones of leadership:

Danger zone
Learning zone (ZPD)
Comfort zone (low anxiety, autopilot)

Negotiation

When negotiating, start with small talk. Build rapport, try to get a sense of their interest, and agree on a format for the negotiation. Don’t cave- it teaches them to negotiate with you that way in the future. Think of it as joint problem-solving- focus on the “we.” Ask questions and really listen to the answers. Walk in the other person’s shoes.

Feedback

When you get negative feedback, listen. Is it a fact or an opinion? Is it accurate? Before you plan your response, ask questions. Keep from getting defensive. Ask for time before you respond to get emotional distance. When giving feedback, note that it’s a system health indicator for actions. If you give it frequently enough, it’s not weird when it’s really necessary. Use specific examples, and focus on actions, attitudes, and behaviors- not personality. It’s not a debate, just your perception. Acknowledge that it can be stressful to get feedback. Not all feedback is valuable- consider the source, find the truth. Give people unlimited kudos, but only two areas for growth. Praise and redirect behavior in balance. Talk about an individual to the whole team about something only when their behaviors affect everyone. Praise can be a dangerous as criticism. You can rephrase wins/losses as “What went well,” and “Even better if.” Dopamine surges not just from winning, but being recognized as a winner. People do the things they think they will be recognized for. Social recognition and financial recognition are not the same thing. The worst jobs are the the thankless ones. When celebrating successes, figure out why it was a success. Feedback loops are control systems, and give you an opportunity to intervene when something is out of control. The feedback loop alerts you when something is broken. Evaluate the ability of a leader by asking their followers. Most business don’t reward great past work, only perceived future value.

Mindset

Train for courage- take incremental risks. To build a courage mindset, focus on the benefits instead of the risks.

6 questions for developing courage:

What are my goals?
How important are they?
Do I have support?
What are the tradeoffs?
Is now the right time?
What are my contingencies?

You can have 3 mindsets:

Victim: No control, avoid the new, difficult, or challenging. A challenge is an opportunity to fail, not succeed.
Corporate: Your control is defined by authority, you just do what you’re told. You know you have control, but it’s dependent on the machine. It’s comfortable.
Accountable: You control your destiny

Judgment can get in the way of learning and lead to the victim mindset. Empathy comes from having failed. Victims have zero chance to change things, accountable people have a greater than zero chance to change things.

Questions

People are incorrectly incentivized for knowing things, rather than asking. Types of questions:

Clarifying- Reveal intent
Adjoining- Related stuff, how it applies in other contexts
Funneling- Diving deeper
Elevating- Zooming out to the big picture

When asking questions, ask yourself:

Why am I asking?
What assumptions do I have?
Are those assumptions valid?
Look for root causes
Look for the questions you really care about

Engagement

Reciprocal employees do unto you as you do unto them. The “deal” between workers and employers is over. They aren’t being terrorists, they’re reacting to their environment. Nobody wants to be disengaged. It’s impossible for an employee to be energized by everything about a job and not think it’s cool. A lot of being a cool place is just not being uncool- discriminatory, low-quality tools, dishonest, neglectful, fear-mongering, or stingy. Authenticity is cool. Time spent at work shouldn’t be boring- it should be fun, quirky, and intense. Big mergers and growing too quickly put coolness at risk. In the quest to be cool, steer clear of “mandatory fun.” If the company delivers, people will push themselves to the limit. Take care of them, they’ll take care of you. Company cultures come from shared values and winning, not out of dictates and ceremonies. Making people happy moves the needle. People don’t talk about engagement with their work, they talk about happiness. You can’t ignore people all year and then give them a survey. People game surveys. You wouldn’t track sales numbers as haphazardly as companies track engagement. There is no such thing as “survey fatigue”- only exhaustion when nothing is done. Measure morale continuously and honestly. Remove incentives to game the system. Jobs influence health, not the other way around. Executives love to talk about engagement, but not burnout. Cortisol from stress and sitting all day are both unhealthy. Working too much is stupid, wasteful, dangerous, expensive, and a surefire sign of incompetent management. Make sure people aren’t working too much- after 8 hours, they’re just adding bugs.

Speeches

Giving a charismatic speech depends on:

Presence and delivery
Framing
- Metaphor
- Stories
- Rhetorical questions
- Contrast
- Lists and repetition
Substance
- Morality
- Sentiment
- Ambition
- Confidence

Followers

Mindless followers aren’t useful- you want sharp people who are devoted to your cause. Types of followers are:

Alienated- Think, don’t participate
Passive- Don’t think or participate
Conformist- Just want to take orders
Exemplary- The right blend
Pragmatic- Play both sides of the fence, may run counter to your mission

Good followers stand up to you when you’re wrong, and support you when you’re right. Pick your battles, and build courage, collaboration, and critical thinking. Ask yourself- in what ways are you making their lives hell?

Bad Situations

When times are tough, define the situation, its causes, its consequences, the implications, and new opportunities.

Tell the truth
Encourage open communication
Communicate that you’re all in it together
Be appreciative of other people
Acknowledge that you’re in a safer place than they are
If you have to do layoffs, do them all at once
Prepare for people to have more stressed reactions than normal

Managing “B” players requires

Being an “A” leader: Better judgment, high EQ, being very driven
Use the vision to rally everyone
Use analytics- get data driven
Lots of feedback
High morale

When turning an organization around:

You need to communicate to people clearly what they’re doing wrong
Make it clear that you’re in charge
Tell them that they’re better than they think they are
Set and hit small goals- get everyone used to winning again

Finances

You can’t let down numbers, only people. When talking about financial results, make sure that everyone knows that they’re a consequence, not a goal. Focus on the behaviors that led to the results. Your 5 key stakeholders are your employees, your customers, your communities, your investors, and your regulators. What is your value proposition for them? What financial or emotional assets are they trading? Greater profits arise from considering the stakeholder KPIs for each dimension.

Mentoring

Mentors help you shift from mastering content to mastering context. It’s a 2-way alliance- you want to be a part of their “deep pockets” of people under them. Always make them look smart for backing you.

Miscellaneous

Failing is one thing; not trying is worse. Quality is reduction in variation. Taylorism isn’t scientific- it seeks to prove, not disprove. Taylorism uses science the way drunks use lamp posts; for support, not illumination. We’re bigger than the job we’re doing. You can’t dictate morals, but you can dictate ethics. Always be looking for your next job. Always have some good news loaded up for your boss. The only permanent value of work is achievement. Disrupting isn’t competing- it’s changing the terms of competition. Freedom can be uncomfortable- without guidance, people will seek authoritarianism, cliques, and self-destruction. Doing “listening tours” are also valuable for inside hires. How you dress matters for first impressions, and will be based on that person’s past experiences.