Leadership

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.

It turns out that reality has a surprising amount of detail, and those details can matter a lot to figuring out what the root problem or best solution is. So if I want to help, I can’t treat those details as a black box: I need to open it up and see the gears inside. Otherwise, anything I suggest will be wrong—or even if it’s right, I won’t have... See more

“The key lesson here is that if we are to intervene, we need a solid idea of not only the benefits of our interventions but also the harm we may cause—the second and subsequent order consequences. Otherwise, how will we know when, despite our best intentions, we cause more harm than we do good?”

“Looking back on my career, my favorite managers allowed me to own decisions, even if they disagreed with me. They couldn't do this for every decision — some were just too expensive or difficult to reverse. But if they spotted an opportunity for me to own a decision, they let me run with it. This would often be preceded by spirited debate, where... See more

Peter Cundhill on finding the right fit for talent:

“You can teach a donkey to climb a tree but it’s easier to hire a squirrel.”

One of the easiest ways to increase your value to an organization is to reduce the friction required to get you to do your job.