at an institution, you can’t just do what is best, you also ...

at an institution, you can’t just do what is best, you also have to build trust and coordinate with others so you are on the same page. This, however, doesn’t mean that you should abdicate your judgment and get in line.I like the approach Sholto Douglas expressed in his interview with Dwarkesh Patel:If I’m trying to write some code and something isn't working, even if it’s in another part of the code base, I’ll often just go in and fix that thing or at least hack it together to be able to get results. [...] I think that's arguably the most important quality in almost anything. It's just pursuing it to the end of the earth. Whatever you need to do to make it happen, you'll make it happen. [...] I’m just going to vertically solve the entire thing. And that turns out to be remarkably effective.Ie. you don’t say, “This is my job and that thing is outside my area”—no, if the value you are trying to promote requires you to go outside your role and learn new skills and politick to get the authority to go ahead: then that is your job.

If I’m trying to write some code and something

Henrik Karlsson • 6 Lessons I Learned Working at an Art Gallery

Saved by Andrei Stoica and

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How to build this skill:

Maximize what you can do on your own: by ruthlessly prioritizing your time, pushing back on activities that have small ROI, and focusing on areas where your input is crucial; for engineers, it often means less coding (if more junior people can do that piece of coding).

How you can maximize what you can do through others:

3 Critical Skills You Need to Grow Beyond Senior Levels in Engineering

A-listers were successful not because they had superior programming skills, but because they took the time to learn why they were building the software in the first place. They sought clarity from the onset, gathering vital information and incorporating it into their design. If the pertinent information wasn’t readily available, they used deductive

Tonianne DeMaria Barry • Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life

Based on your vision and the complex problems that arise in front of you, sometimes you’ll need to roll up your sleeves and show how to do things before you pass the baton and expect others to do it. These moments are especially valuable; leadership can’t be all talk.

Kevin G. Bethune • Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)

It’s not just enough for me personally to be running a fast OODA loop—in a large group, everyone needs to be autonomously making frequent, high-quality, local prioritization decisions, without needing a round-trip through me. To get there, they need to be ambiently aware of:

what else is going on around them, so they can coordinate and update on new

benkuhn.net • How I’ve run major projects

Here's a basic outline of my startup philosophy: 1. There are two types of companies in the world: companies that can do things, and companies that cannot. 2. Companies that can do things are defined by a collective sense of agency and a set of institutional... See more

Andrew Reed x.com