Short-form insights you can read in under 5 minutes.
Asserting a change is terrifying. If it doesn’t work, it’s your fault. If you just don’t, it’s half plausibly the world’s fault. But then mediocrity isn’t anywhere on my bucket list and my title isn’t chief victim of circumstance.
We are trying to do too much. But are we someone boarding a train with one foot on the platform, another on the step, wishing we had a third leg so we could step into the car?
Turns out my leadership team is hobbled building our 2020 plan unless we (mostly I) assert a strategy, concrete three year goal, and resonating language for our mission and values. So, the business books are right. Who knew…
My job is to make and live up to my promises. So, I focus them on things that earn trust and enable safety for our people or that are otherwise foundational to our business. I will make mistakes but I cannot squander a promise.
We embrace empathy and kindness but expect more and engage in constructive conflict. Too eager compromise won’t build an aspirational company.
My leadership team are talented, kind and good people learning to use candor and accountability so we do right by ourselves and other people.
How many leaders have spent significant time working the job most of their employees do every day? Lived experience opens us up to empathy.
I’m starting to feel the urgency and crispness with which a leadership level-10 (L10) meeting runs when all participants honor the intent and format. As with all process adoption, faithful repetition beyond the point of fatigue brings learning.
Changing an organization can feel like pulling parts off a well-oiled machine even when all that machine is highly optimized for is leaking oil.
Helping people accomplish really interesting things is itself a really interesting thing.
Two months in and our newly formed leadership team is entering storming. Perspective explains my excitement. Appreciation for the trust, respect and psychological safety we’re building and the candor we are learning to express.
Ask open questions. Create multiple options. Act consistent with your core values. Empathize with and work towards everyone’s long term best interests. Focus on the integrity and quality of your decisons over dread of the outcomes.