Leadership

“The best new ideas always have unanticipated benefits. So it’s stupid to require people who want to do new things to enumerate the benefits beforehand. The best you can do is choose smart people and then trust their intuitions about what’s worth exploring.”

When your primary goal is to be liked, you can’t take risks. You can’t disagree. You can’t push boundaries. You become a prisoner of other people’s expectations.

Sunflowers always face the sun, right? Similarly, individuals are always trying to guess the CEO’s or the most senior person’s point of view. Accordingly, you have to take active steps to overcome people’s reluctance to stick their necks out if the CEO has a particular perspective on a decision. You need to reward executives for bringing up... See more

“I can’t tell you how much time is spent worrying about decisions that don’t matter. To just be able to make a decision and see what happens is tremendously empowering, but that means you have to set up the situation such that when something does go wrong, you can fix it. When something does go wrong, it doesn’t cost you or your customer an... See more

That said, if you’re asking me, I’d generally recommend against the flying wedge pattern. Most folks who operate this pattern have adopted a closed mindset about the industry’s talent–they already know the best talent–but my experience is that hiring from outside your existing network is not only a great way to find strong candidates, it’s also a... See more

“The three stages of career development are:

1. I want to be in the meeting

2. I want to run the meeting

3. I want to avoid meetings.”

Left unchecked organizations default to bureaucracy. People default to distraction.

It doesn’t take long for 3 priorities to become 10. It doesn’t take long for 2 people in a meeting to become 8. It doesn’t take long to move from people making decisions to committees.

The most productive organizations and people spend a lot of energy fighting what... See more

Managers of managers, therefore, should ask management and leadership questions. For example, "What should you do to your organization to assure that due dates are met?" or "How well do your people understand the quality standards and what are you doing to assure they meet then?" These questions elicit quite a different response and help the

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If the product doesn’t work well, the code is not good.