Notes on leadership
Yet, brand and communications for the company are not the things that keep me awake at night like this—it is 3:38am right now. It's the first word that does—"lead".
As cliché as this sounds, leadership is many things—lonely, hard, unfair. Every day, you have to be excited and motivated for your team. You have to have the answers—and when you don't, you have to know how to find them.
You wish you had telepathy so that you can empathise. You also want to draw a fine line between running a team and having friends. You don't want to be wrong—even when you know it's improbable.
You're responsible even when it isn't your fault. Even when they tell you it isn't your fault, you still feel responsible.
So I'll tell you how I'm learning. I took notes from the last few months leading the team.
- Execution is binary.
"Execution is in ones and zeroes. You either got it done or didn't", my boss said at a meeting one afternoon.
While you may sympathise or do whatever else we do as leaders, if things do not get done, you're failing—and it's no one's fault but yours. So, get things done. Optimise the team with clear final states.
At every direction, every team should have a clear picture of what ."finished" is.
I wrote this down yesterday evening.
- Combine process with spontaneity.
You can't always rush head-in first. Speed is great—if the path is straight, smooth and there's music. With leadership, it's not always Disneyland.
Technique and detail becomes important.
Document processes, but do not micro-manage tasks. Leave the tasks open for creativity, but within a constraint for tracking and success. More importantly, process empowers you for scale.
You can grow and change your team, by studying and optimising how they work. Without documentation, you can only guess.
- Be comfortable with your gut feeling.
You can't make decisions if you stay objective every time. Your personal feelings and experiences are a big part of how you lead.
Listen to every idea, let everyone contribute, debate it with them—but ultimately the decision lies with you. Trust your gut. Sometimes, success won't come from the ideas of your team.
- You can't be stuck.
Today, every romanticises the the version of the 'vulnerable' leader—one who isn't scared to "not know what to do".
You can't.
Granted, you can be clueless, but you can't sit back and say "I don't know what to do". When the result isn't favourable for success, the words ringing in your head should be "what do we do?"
- Be clear
If you can't figure out how to communicate with your team, you might as well not have a team.
Be clear on tasks. Be clear on outcomes. Be clear on deadlines. Be clear on problems. Be clear on schedules.
Leave nothing to interpretation.
The next few months is an interesting array of months for me, and I cannot begin to grasp how to handle it all.
So the question I ask is simple, "what do I do?"
I'll tell you what I did.
Meanwhile, how are you?
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