When he led Goldman Sachs, Bob Rubin once walked the trading floor to get a feel for what was going on. He stopped and chatted with a trader who’d just completed a transaction buying gold. “I like gold,” Bob said offhandedly. A few weeks later, Bob was startled to see how much gold the firm had bought recently. “Why are we so long on gold?” Bob ask

If nothing is beneath your attention, then others will pay attention to details as well.

Second, being aware of small problems and maybe even rolling up your sleeves and fixing them yourself is the best way to kill the “it’s not my job” or, worse, the “that’s beneath me” mentality on your team.

The principle of “self-organizing criticality”—a lot of little corrections create stability but one huge correction creates catastrophe—applies to human relationships as much as it does to markets.

Having regular debates—arguments, even—also lowers tension because it prevents explosive fights.

An effective staff meeting has three goals: it reviews how things have gone the previous week, allows people to share important updates, and forces the team to clarify the most important decisions and debates for the coming week. That’s it.

But I can’t bear more than about five hours of 1:1 time in my calendar. Listening is hard work, and I don’t have an endless capacity for it every day. So I like to limit myself to five direct reports.

I like to meet with each person who works directly for me for fifty minutes a week.

The purpose of a 1:1 meeting is to listen and clarify—to understand what direction each person working for you wants to head in, and what is blocking them.