Snide Guide to Leadership - LeFreq/Singularity GitHub Wiki

The home for this document is now at linkedin/in/majanssen.

ADDXXX: Leadership is entirely defined by your choices and experience built from them. Because it isn't knowledge and the work is don eby some one else. Also: Always drill down when there is subordination within anyone below you in the organization. For political leaders, this is the people themselves. Such behavior will always sabotage you or the organization. Unless your oganization is wrongly conceived then it is significant. If you do this, you will never need to fire anyone, but you may need to master human psychology -- generally a good investment.

By accident or purpose, you're in charge of others. Good leadership is a combination of action, vision, stewardship, and wisdom. You'd better assess the responsibility and risk that that entails, otherwise people get hurt or resources get lost. Will you command and control or train and trust? This guide is a one-page guide of highly-distilled, management experience. If there were a better guide, there would have been better leaders by now.

• Without a vision you're a manager.
• Without action, you're a beaurocrat.
• Without stewardship, you're a baffoon.
• Without wisdom, you're manic.

Come back to this guide whenever you feel lost.

Table of Contents Enemies of leadership... Allies to create the leader... A Trail of Waypoints... Reaching the Summit Acknowledgements

Stay with me here. There are two and only two enemies for both bourgeoning and well-established leaders:

• Grandstanding: Hey you won! But no one cared about that. What they cared about was that you got things done that had tangible benefits to the community's values.
  

Hidden blow of this enemy? Data overload. If you don't know how to delegate, you will be swamped with minutae. Advice: Try one of the many books about management and delegation or fall back and be a follower for awhile. Join a Fight Club and see if your idea of yourself stays standing.

• Entrenchment: You believe you're doing fine. You've worn a groove with routine ways of handling things. Now you've dug yourself in so far that you can't see over the rut you've made. While the former enemy entices you with ego, this enemy entices you with comforts.

Hidden blow here? Misplaced trust. You've got loyal advisors, swamping you with intelligence and making you feel important but, in the end, no actionable knowledge. Advice: Start small. Try being a city mayor or a public administrator. Learn where all the ropes are and how to handle and organize data flows. Need a vision? Go climb a mountain, something that will challenge you and see things from a new perspective.

Those who get defeated by the first enemy succumb to power and eventually get the boot, perhaps after a very high personal cost (cf. Hitler). Those who get defeated by the second, get shuffled to the sideline never knowing that the limelight has left them in the dark (Roosevelt after WWII).

Don't be the person that makes everyone give up on their organization. Fortunately, there are allies. Read on...

Respective to the two enemies, there are two allies to help you defeat these enemies and perfect yourself. They work together, side by side, never separate. Two against two -- that puts you at even odds with the universe. You couldn't ask for a more worthy challenge.

• Tree of Knowledge: Your brain forms and assembles knowledge, along with the collective soul, to avoid repeating past mistakes, so keep it healthy. Eat good foods and take time out to meditate and clear your mind. And without Truth, you won't even be able to get power: you'll be taking it from others.
• Failure: That's right. A leader by definition breaches the Known and explores new territory. If it had already been done you wouldn't need to lead. Without the willingness to fail, opportunities waste away from atrophy. Buffer your failures with preparation, and you shouldn't be wasted by them. No matter how hard the fall, there's always a path. Generally, either consulting the other ally or be willing to admit failure to your constituents.

These two might be your only friends along your journey, as others try to compete or knock you down, so keep them by your side at all times. It's not that others are evil, they just haven't read this guide.

If you FEAR failure (or ignore it), instead of use it as an ally, you will never claim the jewels of success that are listed below. So keep that in mind, no matter how high you're trying to climb or how low that you've fallen.

Now that you know the enemy and know the allies, there are four directions which will perfect yourself, forging jewels out of the rough edges of your (neophyte) soul.

The jewels are formed by two contradictory forces in tension. You have to choose when to utilize each and learn as you go. This is what will make you a leader. The two contradictory forces are the walls of your crucible. Take care not to limit yourself nor overextend yourself -- a delicate balance called "being aware".

• Knowledge-Assembler: Data Miner vs. Avoiding Noise
• Decision-Maker: Being Decisive vs. Being Attentive
• Delegator: Pushing the River vs. Going with the Flow
• Purity-of-Purpose: Your Personal Accomplishments vs. Making Community Successes

A word of advice on this first one: without good data you can't lead, but you also have to learn how to properly extract knowledge from all of your data sources, otherwise it will distract you (were not talking about gathering dirt on employees here). No amount of "data mining" software can do it for you. You have to climb the pyramid of data -> information -> knowledge -> wisdom. There's plenty of advice on all of the others, but this one presents new challenges and opportunities in the Information Age. And on the last one: a good leader doesn't shy away from challenges, but dives into them, knowing that pure intentions and Truth allows you to survive.

Respective to the four directions above, you will master:

• RATIONALITY, rather than being merely logically consistent or self-righteous,
• DECISIVENESS, rather than being negligent or passive,
• INTEGRITY, rather than being obsequious or friendly, and
• POWER, neither weak-willed nor vain.

These are the jewels to claim on the path of success.

True leaders have a foundation to stand on. It is not easy to come by such -- either you need Truth (capital "T") or have a long basis of experience to earn community Respect (capital "R" -- not respect out of fear). A good leader must stay constantly vigilant towards their arena of governance and delegate tasks to maintain that awareness.

Once you defeat the first enemy, you become a person-of-action whom people are willing to put their full confidence into because you're no longer compensating for ignorance or a lack of ideas.
When you defeat the second, you become a respected authority to the community, knowing that life is too precious and fleeting to waste on comforts and ego.

Finally, at the end of this path, you've found the precise balance between too much order and too little to maintain virtues like Truth, Beauty, Justice, Harmony -- corresponding to these four masteries above. Together these create value -- the wealth of the nation. You're the Captain and will find endless possibility awaits to make a better world. Go to it: children's futures and the Earth and in peril and there are too few people trying.

This document comes from keter who held all of the presidents and the best leaders of the past. Also, respect to don Juan, the Yaqui Indian sorcerer, who helped forge these documents. And Rush Limbaugh for sharing his story of failure and to my former bosses who helped me see the right and wrong ways to lead.

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Four sectors of business:

• Finances: tracking flows of money and keeping it the black
• Product: defining your business to yourself and making quality
• Facilities: the environment to facilitate the rest.
• Branding: defining your business to others and ensuring that your purpose is clear to the marketplace.

The +/- on this is the business charter (or definition) and the immune system of the company. That would be YOU, the leader. It is you keeping things well-organized, on-task, financially viable, and safe.

A well-organized business is alike a perfectly-engineered machine. Everything functions as it is designed and all hand-offs are perfectly executed. Further, it doesn't use excess resources, AND it offers something valuable to the world.

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Four jewel-correspondences:

• Rationality: Emerald,
• Decisiveness: Sapphire,
• Integrity: Topazeil,
• Power: Ruby.