When I was a kid, there was nothing more exciting than hearing someone shout, "No ref, no rules!" during a soccer game at recess. It felt like pure freedom. Suddenly you could use your hands, tackle people on the field, score from anywhere.

For about ten minutes, it was glorious chaos.

Then it became actual chaos. The stronger, faster kids started dominating the game. Many kids lost interest and stopped playing. Someone usually got hurt. Arguments broke out. Eventually, we'd sheepishly go back to regular rules (or one of the teachers would make us) because, well, it turned out the game was more fun in the long-run when everyone knew what they could and couldn't do.

Most of us learned this lesson on the playground and moved on, but some never did.

When CEOs Play "No Ref, No Rules"

Much of Silicon Valley has spent the last few decades running the adult version of "no ref, no rules." Mark Zuckerberg's famous motto "move fast and break things" was basically the corporate equivalent. The ideology has been intoxicating: rules are for the slow and bureaucratic, disruption is always virtuous, and speed equals progress.

And just like on the playground, it’s exciting… until reality catches up.

Theranos moved fast and promised to revolutionize medicine. Elizabeth Holmes hired lawyers who would say yes to anything, and when David Boies finally started asking uncomfortable questions, she just got rid of him, lest he reveal the technology simply didn't work. FTX moved fast and promised to democratize finance. Sam Bankman-Fried surrounded himself with people willing to play fast and loose with the law, collectively perpetuating one of the most scandalous financial frauds in recent memory. Remember WeWork’s irresponsible finances and toxic leadership, or Humane AI peddling $700 snake oil as revolutionary AI? The list goes on. In the name of moving fast, they all broke rules and norms, but also investor confidence, customer trust, and in many cases employee lives.

The patterns are easy to spot once you’re savvy to them: legal teams are labeled "cost centers," dissenting voices are marginalized, and everyone is expected to find ways to say yes or step aside. And when things turn upside down, the “no ref, no rules” crowd insists on shirking any responsibility.

These examples aren't merely business failures. They’re moral failures with real human costs by the thousands: from patients getting false diagnoses, to investors losing billions, to employees losing their livelihoods and even future employability. But hey, at least the companies moved fast!

When the Stakes Turn Deadly: Pete Hegseth's Pentagon Playground

We’ve now seen this same mentality creep into places where the consequences are life and death.

Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired the top Judge Advocates General (TJAGs) in the same week. These are the military's top lawyers, the people whose job it is to make sure our armed forces operate within the law. Hegseth, who once reduced military lawyers to the epithet, "jagoffs," apparently decided that legal oversight was cramping his vision of a more “lethal” military.

His reasoning sounds familiar: Rules are holding us back from victory. We need to return to the "warrior ethos," unencumbered by all this “legal friction.” Why should we waste any time consulting legal experts to confirm the world’s most powerful military is aligned with the rules of engagement, Geneva Conventions, or Constitutional rights? It’s the same "no ref, no rules" mentality, except this time in the context of war, where human lives and sometimes even the world order are at stake.

It’s worth acknowledging that adversaries can certainly exploit adherence to laws and values for strategic advantage. Sure, a soccer player can gain an edge by diving for penalties or time-wasting when the ref isn't looking. But abandoning rules doesn't even the score — it forfeits the game.

Even front line officers understand this. In 2010, Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. Army, revised the rules of engagement in Afghanistan to ensure the protection of Afghani civilians during hostilities. Petraeus wrote: "We can't win without fighting but we also cannot kill or capture our way to victory. … That's exactly what the Taliban want. Don't fall into their trap." He understood that skirting legal and moral constraints creates insurgents, destroys alliances, and undermines mission success.

Hegseth apparently has a different endgame in mind. In his worldview, "move fast and break things" on the battlefield appears to be an end itself, which ironically risks undermining what the military is presumably fighting for in the first place.

Constraints Fuel Progress

Here's what those kids on the playground, Silicon Valley disruptors, and now Pentagon leadership, failed to wrap their heads around: constraints don’t stifle progress, they enable it.

Consider the artificial constraint of Twitter's 140-character limit. It initially seemed arbitrarily restrictive, but it forced people to be creative and concise in ways that revolutionized communication. New forms of expression were born: hashtags, threads, new levels of wit and pithiness. They became cultural phenomena that only seem mundane today because they’re so ubiquitous.

Or think of SpaceX, which faced head-on the physics, engineering, and economic constraints that make rockets insanely expensive to build, only to be discarded. SpaceX used these very constraints as the foundation for breakthroughs that have reshaped the entire space ecosystem.

We can also look to the defense sector: U.S. military strategies requiring accurate tracking and precision strikes to minimize unintended casualties led to the invention of GPS. These constraints imposed by military strategy not only enabled the development of specific solutions like GPS-guided munitions, but a technology that has become integral to our modern infrastructure.

This principle even extends into the arts. Janan Ganesh (incidentally, one of the most delightfully pithy writers of recent vintage) explained in a piece called, “Why Oasis won in the end,” how the lack of constraint has curbed artistic innovation:

Creative breakthroughs have tended to happen as rebellions against governmental, religious or academic rigidity. Hence Monet, and Johnny Rotten. Now that almost everything is permitted, there is correspondingly less frustration and desire to strike out in new directions.

Constraints, whether rooted in nature (like physics) or devised by humans (like laws), have sparked incredible advances spanning food security, health standards, government design (like the US Constitution!), reliable infrastructure, and on.

And sure, testing boundaries is a critical part of discovery and progress. But there's a difference between testing boundaries and disregarding them entirely. Those who disregard the rules just because they're inconvenient may think they’re unleashing potential, but in reality they’re just ruining the game for everyone and leaving others to clean up the mess.

Why a Culture of Accountability Wins in the End

Funny, the people most eager to remove accountability are often the ones who most need it. They mistake the absence of constraint for freedom, but what they're really choosing between is accountability versus chaos. Thomas Hobbes understood this centuries ago when he observed that life in the absence of rules and norms is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Consider economics: The rule of law creates the predictable framework that makes long-term investment and innovation possible. You can't build a thriving economy when contracts are meaningless and property rights are arbitrary. Hobbes again:

In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death….

Venezuela’s drastic economic collapse is a recent example of what happens to a nation that’s abandoned legal accountability. The judiciary became an arm of the regime, paving the way for electoral fraud, human rights abuses, and major crimes – gutting the institutional safeguards that underpin economic stability and make growth possible. Venezuela's opposition leader María Corina Machado commented in a recent podcast interview: “[H]ow would anybody invest in a country that is absolutely in the last place in terms of rule of law…literally the last place, out of 140 countries evaluated around the world?” She has a point.

Or consider the consequences when accountability breaks down in war. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, marked by deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure and widespread atrocities, has not just cost it on the battlefield. It has cost it legitimacy: “Russia’s actions in Ukraine earned the nation pariah status, which will ultimately be disastrous for accomplishing its military objectives and could also have real long-term economic impact.” Even though Russia remains formally powerful, its global standing has cratered, sanctions have deepened, and its allies tread cautiously. The images from Bucha and Mariupol outraged the world and entrenched Russia's isolation.

It should go without saying, but following in Russia’s footsteps should not be a goal of the Pentagon. Yet Hegseth seems a bit too comfortable making light of rules and norms: pardons for convicted war criminals, contempt for rules of engagement, disdain for the Geneva Conventions, the sudden firing of the top military legal officers. As reporter Hafiz Rashid summarized, “It seems that [Hegseth] thinks that there is no problem with U.S. soldiers committing war crimes, as long as America is ‘tough.’” But you can win every battle and still lose the war, if you lose legitimacy.

And yes, of course rules and their enforcers can go too far. Many a dystopian novel has been penned about police states or over-engineered societies gone wrong (classics like 1984, Brave New World, and The Giver, for instance). Some of us might even remember the tyranny of the overeager hall monitor from grade school.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. When companies shrug off responsibility, they tend to collapse — or worse, position others to absorb the inevitable wreckage that follows. When states dilute or altogether disregard the rule of law, as convenient as it may seem at the time, they ultimately become unstable, hollowed out by corruption, violence, and fear. And it’s people who pay the price.

The "no ref, no rules" crowd will always be with us, convinced they're too important for rules. But the rest of us learned on the playground that the game is more fun, more fair, and more productive with accountability.

We'll always encounter leaders who want to play without referees. I suppose it’s up to each of us to have the courage to insist on better. After all, we figured this out when we were kids. We can figure it out as adults too.

What’s your experience with the "no ref, no rules" attitude in your workplace or industry? I'd love to hear from you.

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I know it’s been a while since I’ve written for the blog. A few other writing projects have been in the works. If they pan out, I’ll be sure to share with you. For now, hope you enjoy this topic, which has been on my mind for the better part of a year.

“I’m just curious…”

How many times have you heard someone start a question with these three words, knowing full well that what they’re about to say has nothing to do with curiosity? What follows is less a question and more a veiled opinion or a challenge disguised as innocent inquiry.

“I’m just curious… why would you choose to do it that way?” The judgment and I-know-better undertone are palpable.

This type of faux-curiosity is everywhere these days. And ironically, it evinces the opposite of what curiosity requires: humility.

Today, curiosity is the star feature of business articles and personal development blogs. It’s praised as a driver of innovation, a secret to success, even a cornerstone of good leadership. And it’s all true. In fact, curiosity is a core value I myself try to live by. Curiosity has opened my eyes to diverse perspectives. It’s exposed me to new connections and learnings. It’s made my world bigger and more interesting. And it’s helped me to grow as a person.

But humility is a prerequisite to curiosity, and it’s usually mentioned as an afterthought, if at all. Real curiosity — the kind that’s generative, connective, transformative and does all the things it promises to do — is impossible without humility.

Absent humility, curiosity is performative. It ceases to be about learning and becomes all about showing: showing what we already know, showing how sharp our questions are, showing how right we are. (I’ll admit, I’m guilty of this sometimes!) That’s how you get panel discussions where panelists talk past each other, or a workplace where team leads never really come together because each thinks they know best, or “thought leadership” that amounts to confident speculation (how many “AI experts” can you count since the launch of ChatGPT?).

This is partly the result of living in a culture where humility isn’t rewarded. Most of us have experienced a work setting where incompetent leaders are elevated, volume trumps substance, and that one loud and over-confident person gets recognition, deference, and promotions. And practicing humility can be hard. It feels like a risk — to our ego, our reputation, even our self-confidence. We’re wired to want to be right. To wit: studies show that people routinely overestimate their knowledge or abilities, like the (in)famous stat that about 30% of adults (interestingly, 50% when considering only men) believe they could safely land an airliner in an emergency. So in environments that prize decisiveness, action, and expertise, admitting “I don’t know” can feel like shooting yourself in the foot.

For all these reasons and more, humility doesn’t get much airplay. It isn’t loud. It isn’t sexy. But humility is what allows us to say, “Maybe I don’t know enough yet and would like to learn more.” It’s what creates room for listening and for the possibility of change.

Practicing humility doesn’t necessarily mean selling yourself short, though. It’s the courage to ask the so-called “dumb” question that everyone else in the room is too afraid to ask. It’s letting go of the need to be the smartest person in the room and empowering others to contribute. It’s recognizing that your perspectives are incomplete and inviting someone else’s to help deepen your understanding. It’s being willing to say, “I was wrong, and I’d like to learn from you.” Admittedly, it’s not always easy. And women in particular face a double bind: appear confident, or be dismissed; admit uncertainty, and risk being overlooked.

Nevertheless, it’s the humble ones we ought to be celebrating and emulating. And they’re out there — exemplars like Warren Buffet, Mary Barra, and Nelson Mandela. So if we want to be truly curious, we also have to practice humility. We have to be willing to admit we don’t know everything. To learn from people we might have underestimated. To be open to changing our minds.

Curiosity without humility is ego with a question mark at the end. And maybe that’s the question worth asking ourselves next time we say, “I’m just curious…”

Are we?

Boss 1: I really need you to focus on the how, not the what.

Employee A: ...but shouldn’t the what influence the how?

Boss 2: Here, we prioritize execution.

Employee B: ...even if we don’t know what strategy we’re supposed to be executing against?

Boss 3: At this company, it’s important to get everyone aligned around a common strategy.

Employee C: ...even though we haven’t delivered or executed a single thing in months?

I really could go on, but I won’t. This is but a tiny fraction of the black-and-white thinking I’ve encountered over the years in the working world. (Scroll down to check out my non-exhaustive ‘this vs. that’ list. Recognize any?)

Singular examples like these seem innocuous, meriting no more than a dismissive shrug, maybe an eye roll — or even a nod of agreement from some of you. In fact, there are many useful reasons we separate ‘this vs. that’: anthropological, social, psychological.

For example, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss found that a uniting factor across humanity was our tendency to see the world in terms of binary oppositions. German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel structured dialectics to enable productive inquiry and discourse based around two opposing sides. German sociologist Max Weber defined ‘ideal types’ as heuristic tools designed for understanding and modeling the real world. As with all heuristics, ideal types simplify real-world complexity, in their case by essentializing what is being examined. For example, you have likely come across an ideal types analysis of leaders: the charismatic leader, the quiet leader, and so on.

The common thread? ‘This vs. that’ is helpful analytically — but it is not reflective of reality.

Best illustration of Levi-Strauss’ binary oppositions, IMHO. And complete with a little motivational bonus from Merlin:

You must set your sights upon the heights

But we love simple answers to complex problems. Resorting to black-and-white thinking is a tempting way to confront complexity and accompanying messiness. But black-and-white thinking isn’t all good. Here is an excerpt from the WebMD entry on it:

Black-and-white thinking is a thought pattern that makes people think in absolutes. For instance, you may think you are either always right or the world’s biggest failure. Psychologists consider this thought pattern to be a cognitive distortion because it keeps you from seeing life the way it really is: complex, uncertain, and constantly changing.

And what we do within organizations is incredibly complex: collaborating across disciplines, teams, and often timezones to build products; managing and leading diverse teams of people; navigating dynamic and unpredictable market and political environments; responding to changing customer demands.

The thing is, exchanges like those in the introduction aren’t typically one-offs. They tend to reflect broader organizational narratives — which in turn reflect and/or shape organizational mindsets and cultures. To illustrate one way this might come to be, imagine:

A respected senior leader makes an organization-wide announcement meant to create a sense of urgency and motivate everyone to beat a quarterly deadline. In a rhetorical move, that leader makes a rallying cry: “Execution eats strategy for lunch!” Over the next several months, every employee on every team is all-in on prioritizing all things execution, and the organization beats the deadline — hooray! The senior leader celebrates along with the team, praising excellence in execution and enjoying congratulations from the C-suite.

With all that success and positive reinforcement, each person on the team — including the senior leader — begins to internalize that execution always matters more than strategy. Prioritizing execution over strategy makes decision-making around things like allocation of budget and headcount much simpler. “Execution eats strategy for lunch” imperceptibly morphs from rallying cry into a credo.

Fast forward six months, and the same team is producing a ton of stuff, but the value of that stuff is questionable at best. People who were hired to do research and strategy work for the company feel lost and underappreciated. There is no strategy to execute against. The lunch tray is empty.

Therein lies the problem: When black-and-white thinking becomes an organizational driver, the organization itself becomes less capable of operating in the complex, messy real world. Although ‘this vs. that’ can be a helpful analytical and decision-making tool, the separation can also become overly formalistic and neglect the interrelated nature of most binaries. The heuristics that help us process complexity may also eliminate depth of thinking and lead us astray. H. L. Mencken captured it well: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

Moreover, ‘this vs. that’ can quickly become ‘us vs. them.’ This happens because some of the binaries that emerge within organizations align with particular teams or departments. Sprinkle in organizational power dynamics — like more funding and headcount, higher salaries, greater decision-making authority, easier access to executives, sometimes even blatant cronyism — and over time, the teams focused on ‘THIS’ becomes favored over the teams focused on ‘that’. I’m sure you can extrapolate how that plays out.

So what are we to do with all of this?

Are we to abandon categories, models, heuristics, and analytical tools? (A fun aside: Statistics are one of those useful tools for making sense of the uncertainty around us. Check out one of the more interesting articles I’ve read recently, authored by David Spiegelhalter, emeritus professor of statistics at the University of Cambridge, UK. He concludes the piece, “In our everyday world, probability probably does not exist — but it is often useful to act as if it does.”)

No. I’m not suggesting that at all. Approaching everything as fluid and category-less breaks down quickly, stymying decisions, fostering overwhelm, and generating excessive confusion.

But I am suggesting that as we come across black-and-white thinking at work, we stop for a moment and:

* Acknowledge that the black-and-white thinking is simplifying something far more complex.

* Appreciate which assumptions we may be making, or glosses we may be applying, to land on the black-and-white model.

* Consider how the black-and-white model is helpful, in what context, and for what purposes.

* Accept that the black-and-white model has limitations and commit to questioning what they are early and often.

* Ask whether explicitly embracing complexity, messiness, and uncertainty may be more useful for a particular situation.

Put more simply: let’s not create misunderstanding using the very tools we’ve invented to help us with understanding.

Non-exhaustive list of ‘this vs. that’ at work

* Management vs. leadership

* Substance vs. process

* What vs. how

* Engineering vs. science

* Execution vs. strategy

* Operations vs. core business

* Create vs. protect

* Product envision vs. product discover

* Revenue generation vs. cost center

* Technical vs. nontechnical

* Science vs. art

* Subjective vs. objective

* Qualitative vs. quantitative

What would you add?

We hear about empowered teams all the time:

Pour your heart into making sure every member of your team feels empowered to be their best. Invest in them. Develop them. Then watch them soar. -Howard Schultz, Starbucks former CEO

Great teams are comprised of ordinary people that are empowered and inspired. -Marty Cagan, Silicon Valley Product Group Founder & Partner

Leadership is about shaping a vision, aligning people, and empowering them to go beyond their perceived limitations. -A.G. Lafley, Procter & Gamble former CEO

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others. -Bill Gates, Microsoft co-Founder & former CEO

But what exactly is an ‘empowered’ team? It’s quite the buzzword! 

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Like with most buzzwords, we may have some intuitive sense of what it means — but have you tried describing an empowered team concretely? I did recently, and it was harder than expected. My conviction was definitely stronger than my understanding. 

Team States

In my attempt to remedy that, here’s what I’ve come up with so far: Just as water can exist as a solid, liquid, or gas depending on temperature and pressure, I propose that teams can exist in various Team States. ‘Empowered’ happens to be one of those Team States, with its own set of Inputs, Markers, and Conditions.

* Inputs. To shift a team into an empowered Team State, you need to apply the right heat and pressure — things like assigning ownership over outcomes, scoping purpose-driven efforts, designing strengths-based work, encouraging cross-team collaboration, fostering psychological safety, role modeling desirable behaviors, investing in the team’s professional development, etc.

* Markers. Accountability, initiative, fearless decision-making, seamless collaboration, effective communication, continuous learning, etc. — these are observable behaviors indicating that a team has achieved an empowered Team State.

* Conditions. What enables Inputs to translate to an empowered Team State? How can we be sure observed Markers actually belong to an empowered team? The tricky part is getting the environmental Conditions just right to ensure our Inputs induce, and Markers correspond, to an empowered Team State.

People have written extensively about Inputs and Markers (notably, using different terminology), but Conditions are conspicuously missing from the conversation. This was my big discovery and where I spent the bulk of my efforts diving into this empowered teams concept.

Team Phase Diagram

You may remember seeing a phase diagram for water in high school chemistry or physics illustrating the environmental conditions required for each state of matter. (Though you probably didn’t see this XKCD version!) So what’s the equivalent for Team States? 

Here’s a crack at it. In a nutshell, two variables primarily set the Conditions for a Team State: context and license to operate. The right combination of these means you get an empowered Team State. Get the balance of these wrong, and your empowered Team State evaporates! 

Here is a more detailed illustration, styled as a Team Phase Diagram: Instead of showing the conditions under which water becomes ice or steam, it shows the Conditions under which a team becomes disenfranchised, compliant, chaotic, or of course, empowered. 

Context: The Awareness Factor 

* Has anyone ever asked you to travel somewhere without telling you where you’re going, why you’re going there, or how to get there? Low Context is a lot like that. Team members neither understand the ‘why’ behind their work nor how their collective efforts fit together. In some cases, they’re not even aware of each other’s contributions. 

* High Context means team members understand mission and strategy with extreme clarity. Everyone understands not just their piece of the puzzle, but the whole picture, including impact on users and other stakeholders, productive team dynamics and orchestration, and how individual contributions roll up to collective success. 

***Ideal Condition for empowered Team State: High Context! We want people to deeply understand the what, why, and how behind their efforts.

License to Operate: The Autonomy Factor 

* No License to Operate is like a team in a straightjacket. Whether it's explicitly forbidden or implicitly discouraged (“Remember what happened to Bob when he tried to make that happen?”), proactive measures and autonomous decision-making are rare or nonexistent. 

* Unlimited License to Operate is more like the wild west, with unfettered initiatives and activities and no one to reign them in. Sometimes an unlimited license is explicitly granted, and sometimes it just happens when no one stops the chaos.

***Ideal Condition for empowered Team State: Moderate License to Operate, i.e., autonomy with guardrails. Note, however, as Context increases, so must License to Operate expand to yield an empowered Team State.

So there you have it — the (pseudo)science of team empowerment! I’d love to hear what you think about this model, or about empowered teams generally.

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How often do you compare yourself to others? Be honest! 

Isn’t it tiring? You either end up swimming in self-doubt or cultivating a superiority complex — or some paradoxical combination of the two. 

In the "woe is me" version, you become subsumed by imposter syndrome and blind to your own talents and strengths. You look at others and think, "If only I had their [insert enviable quality here], I'd be unstoppable!" Then there's the "entitlement" version: You've worked harder than anyone you know, but somehow the corner office or promotion still eludes you. You find yourself thinking, "I deserve that [insert coveted thing here] as much as they do!"

None of these are good outcomes.

Rest assured: we've all been there. In fact, it’s natural to compare yourself to others. Among other things, it’s a tool for self-evaluation and self-development. Anthropologically, comparisons are critical for navigating social hierarchies. 

But just because it's natural doesn't mean it's always helpful. How does something so natural end up being so counterproductive? There are many reasons, but two stand out in my view.

First, you're unique, as is everyone. Sure, that sounds cliché. But it’s important to note that your collective life experiences are one-of-a-kind. The same is true of each person you’re comparing yourself to. So making an apples-to-apples comparison between you and someone else is a flawed idea from the get-go. Your path and their path may have some similarities, but they are ultimately going to have fundamental differences. 

Second, people’s public personas are curated versions of themselves. Social media has done nothing but amplify this fact. For every public thing you see about a person, there are endless learnings, epiphanies, struggles, sacrifices, failures, decisions, etc. you don’t see. So comparing yourself to someone’s public persona is misleading at best, and unnecessarily destructive at worst.

Stop going down these unhelpful comparison paths already, and do these four things instead:

1/ Follow your curiosity.

Dive into something that sparks your interest. But take caution! Don’t choose something because you think it will impress others or somehow give you an edge. Focus on something you’re genuinely excited about. Learn about it, immerse yourself in it, create something out of it. Whether it's learning to play jazz flute, designing a new fitness regimen, or decoding the mysteries of quantum physics, follow your curiosity. Start small: Read a book, watch tutorials online, or take an online course. Then challenge yourself to create something with your new knowledge, shifting from passive consumption to active creation. This will move you into a growth mindset oriented around generative opportunities and away from the irrational scarcity mindset where you see opportunities as a limited resource in this world.

2/ Celebrate a personal accomplishment.

For a moment, think of yourself as a time-traveling biographer, carefully observing your past self. Pick a skill or aspect of your life and look back on it six months, a year, or even five years. Maybe you've gone from burning water to making a Michelin-star worthy cassoulet. Perhaps you've evolved from awkward small talk to holding engaging conversations. Or you've progressed from writing a ‘Hello World’ program to building a full-blown app. Whatever it is, acknowledge your journey. Write about it, create a before-and-after chart, or simply give yourself a gold star. This exercise will reinforce your sense of agency and self-actualization, reminding you that you're capable of development and achievement.

3/ Help someone out.

Find a friend, colleague, or family member who could use a hand with something you're good at — and help them out. Maybe you’re a spreadsheet wizard and help a friend with their budget. Or maybe you’re quite handy and assist a neighbor with their wobbly fence. Perhaps you’re a talented writer and edit a colleague's important email. As you offer help, take note of how your skills, which you might take for granted, make a difference. The point is to get out of your own head and constructively redirect the energy you’ve been using to compare yourself to others. This practice will not only boost your confidence but also cultivate a sense of gratitude for your abilities and the opportunity to use them positively.

4/ Identify and emulate an admirable trait.

Now that you've reinforced your growth mindset, agency, confidence, and sense of gratitude, it's safe to proceed with constructive people-watching — subject to strict guardrails. Start by thinking of someone you admire: what specific trait or skill do you find inspiring? Maybe it's their public speaking prowess, their knack for diffusing tense situations, or their ability to explain complex topics simply. The key is to keep it specific! Once you've identified the specific trait or skill, brainstorm ways to develop it yourself. Don't be shy about asking for advice; reach out to friends or mentors for their insights. If you're feeling bold and it's appropriate, you might even approach the person you admire. A simple, "I really admire how you [insert trait or skill]. Any tips on how I could work on that?" can spur valuable conversations. Remember, the goal isn't to become a carbon copy of someone else, but to use their example as inspiration.

In taking these proactive steps, you'll find yourself too busy taking charge — notably, of the things you actually have control over — to worry about going down the destructive comparisons path. Before you know it, you might just become the person others are inspired by.

And anyway, life's too short to spend it wishing you were someone else. You're the star of your own life — make it a good great one!

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By now you’ve likely read or heard about Paul Graham’s ‘founder mode’ essay. I started reading the essay with excitement—you could feel energy and conviction from the get-go—and I left the essay… confused. And frankly, worried that this essay will unintentionally become a manifesto for a whole new generation of awful founders (hence, why I bothered to write this during Labor Day weekend).

Now, first things first: I’m not a founder, and I don’t pretend to know the founder’s experience. But I do know teams and organizations, and I’ve worked with many founders. So with a lot of humility, and openness to feedback that I’m missing something here, below are some thoughts on the essay.  

I think I understand Graham’s core point: that creating and growing—not just an idea but a group of people—into a successful organization requires an approach quite unique from running an established company. Conventional wisdom is unlikely to help founders realize their vision, and many of the people giving advice don’t get how different these early days actually are. We need a better understanding of ‘founder mode,’ so that founders are better set up for success. This all makes sense to me!

But that’s where my nodding along ends, and the crinkly lines of confusion on my forehead begin. Though I’ve not fully refined my takeaways, in the interest of not totally missing the moment, below are three points that initially jumped out, plus suggested reframes for each.

Confusion 1: What the heck is ‘manager mode’? 

In the essay, ‘manager mode’ apparently refers to hiring “professional managers” to run a company. But what is a professional manager: someone with an MBA, someone with experience in management roles, something else? This is just a guess, but perhaps Graham is getting at the folly of hiring a bunch of bureaucrats. And I think we all agree that bureaucrats and dynamic environments (like startups—or most companies, frankly) don’t mesh. I suppose we could stop there, but it’s worth digging deeper. 

Moving the professional managers category from the abstract into reality, I don’t think the notion of ‘manager mode’ holds up. Given my work experience (over a dozen orgs of different shapes and sizes), I can confidently say that most people in management positions aren’t “taught to run companies” as Graham suggests, let alone taught well. I’ve seen managers who unfortunately practice something akin to “the principle that the CEO should engage with the company only via his or her direct reports.” Those managers learned that principle from somewhere—but where? Probably not an MBA program, and probably not from another good manager. 

Most managers are placed into their roles with little-to-no training in management or leadership—and yes, I’m lumping management/leadership together because they are intertwined, even if not explicitly, in the essay and in real life—and then left to fend for themselves. More often than not, their managers have had a similar experience. Hard skills, like finance, might be an exception. But even there, formal training must be followed with on-the-job learning. 

It turns out that learning management skills remains somewhat of an apprenticeship (oy vey), so—unless you’re lucky enough to work with a leader who received quality on-the-job training and/or exposure to effective management in practice—we’re all stuck with perpetual cycles of under-developed managers and no meaningful standards of performance. That’s why I think managers are less the “professional fakers” Graham alludes to and more like poorly prepared individuals trying to get by in this world. (Anecdotally, I’ve never worked with a manager who doesn’t also contribute IC work. I’m not saying Graham’s parasitic manager caricature doesn’t exist, but it’s more likely that underperformance—managerial and otherwise—can be linked to other causes, two of which I get into below.)

To be clear, this implies that in addition to non-founders offering unhelpful advice and underwhelming performance by so-called professional managers, former founders themselves are likely spouting suboptimal advice on effective management. 

Potential reframe: Think of management skills and org design as potential tools. 

I’m not suggesting that founders shouldn’t be skeptical of managers and “black box” org structures. Very much the opposite. Founders should think critically about the skills and roles they need to accomplish their goals, hire people to meet those needs, and use org design to enhance workflows, communication, and that sort of thing. 

But distilling the roles you actually need in the context of org structure isn’t always straightforward, and advice to overhire runs rampant (in early stage and mature companies alike, by the way). For example, as a company grows, the volume of “stuff” to manage (coordination, communication, finances, etc.) also grows. Should a founder hire people to manage the “stuff,” distribute responsibility among existing employees to manage it, or allocate resources toward designing processes and tools that help streamline it? 

There is no right answer, of course. The key is for founders to understand (and receive help in understanding) what they need, while acknowledging the reality of management skills today, and make hiring and org design decisions accordingly. I think where this leaves us is that ‘manager mode’ probably isn’t a thing—but hiring ineffective managers is. 

Confusion 2: Delegation and micromanagement are not binary opposites. 

The essay seriously mischaracterizes delegation: “You tell your direct reports what to do, and it's up to them to figure out how.” Agreed—that is terrible advice! But delegation isn’t tossing responsibility over to someone and hoping it all works out. It involves much more: understanding the capability of the delegatee and scoping the delegated responsibilities accordingly; conveying relevant context to them; aligning on outcomes; providing clarity on practicalities like timing and resources; potentially providing training, tools, and ongoing support; etc. Feedback loops are important so that the work doesn’t end up in a black hole, along with wasted efforts. Another way to put it: Effective delegation is a lot of work.

In addition, the essay implies that the only way to be involved in the details of what your team is doing is to micromanage: “But you don't get involved in the details of what they do. That would be micromanaging them, which is bad.” This statement also suggests that conventional wisdom considers micromanagement to always be wrong. 

Neither of these claims is true. Hands-on management through working sessions and coaching is just one way to stay involved in initiatives without micromanagement; there are many other approaches. And sometimes, you absolutely do need someone to execute what you need and how you need it because you simply don’t have time to do it yourself or take the time to delegate properly. This is normal and most would agree it’s 100% appropriate.

Potential reframe: Delegation and execution each have costs, and founders must weigh the ROI of delegating vs executing tasks themselves.

In reality, the space between micromanagement and hands-off delegation is vast. Instead of thinking in (what I would consider false) binaries, founders may get more value out of identifying the things they must or want to be actively involved in vs those they are comfortable merely keeping a pulse on. 

For the former category, founders could take various approaches ranging from leading an initiative outright to participating in working sessions, to reviewing work product, and so on. For the latter category, founders could consider potential candidates to take on those responsibilities and, exercising solid delegation skills, stay more or less involved depending on performance, experience, and trust levels. Over time, appropriate levels of involvement would likely shift, perhaps decreasing as trust grows, or perhaps increasing during critical moments for the organization.

By the way, for what it’s worth: all of these skills are core management and leadership skills!

Confusion 3: Founders are not victims. 

The most confusing element of this essay was how it portrayed founders as victims of sorts. Without discounting Graham’s point that founders get bad advice from people who don’t know what they’re talking about, he paints a picture in which founders have little agency, and everyone is out to get them. Just glance at the language in the essay: 

professional fakers

let them drive the company into the ground

founders … being gaslit from both sides

everyone telling these founders the wrong thing

C-level execs, as a class, include some of the most skillful liars in the world

headwind of bad advice

It starts to sound like there is a conspiracy founders are falling victim to! I don’t know about you, but all founders I’ve met are courageous—enough to start a company. Not victims at all. The good ones are also humble enough to know when to ask for help, while being capable and smart enough to meet advice with healthy skepticism. 

And the best ones? They own their decisions and assume accountability for the successes and failures of their company. They’ve embraced that being a founder implies overcoming slim odds, while navigating myriad priorities and assembling and leading a team of people (just about the toughest thing to do successfully in life). And while they remain adaptable when the ground shifts beneath them, the best founders I’ve met do their darndest to ensure that the world’s circumstances —including bad advice, poor market conditions, weak hires, resource mismanagement, and so on—don’t cripple them, but rather shape their journeys as leaders of a new venture. 

I 100% applaud and support Graham’s call to more effectively support founders. But I don’t understand the jump from there to blaming others for failures and setbacks.

Potential reframe: Cultivating leadership skills should be a priority for founders, as well as for their advisors and investors. 

Although you typically won’t find me referencing Jocko Willink, it seems appropriate to highlight one of his more well-known quotes: “There are no bad teams, just bad leaders.” Leadership is the big, gaping hole in Graham’s essay. He never talks about it; the word leadership doesn’t even appear in the essay. This might be by design; it is, after all, an overused and relatively abstract term. 

And yet a call for teaching and developing strong leadership skills amongst founders, given that this is practically nonexistent across the entire private sector (see also Confusion 1), is the most important message Graham could have, but did not, deliver. Which—and please excuse my sarcasm—is not surprising given the leadership behaviors I’ve seen in the tech sector. 

The thing is, founders aren’t merely developing an idea or inventing a thing and then letting someone else run with it. Founders have made the bold decision to take that idea, nurture it, and invite others to trust them and join the journey. This is first and foremost a massive leadership challenge! So why don’t we set up founders for success by equipping them with leadership skills and supporting their growth as leaders? 

If a founder is letting people “drive the company into the ground” or unable to negotiate less-than-optimal circumstances—harsh as it may sound, that’s a leadership failure. All the best founders I’ve met know this.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of my new role is returning to the world of deep tech and engineering. I’m already hearing terms I’ve not heard in years. You can bet I’ll be drawing all sorts of tech-to-something analogies, in part as a mechanism for (re)learning—and for better or worse, sharing some of these analogies with you!

First up: an analogy between team and fluid dynamics. If you’re not already rolling your eyes (hey, I wouldn’t blame you!)—or even if you are—I’m hoping this offers fresh insights about team dynamics, along with some fluid mechanics basics for those who are curious. 

Start by closing your eyes and picturing your dream team. How does it feel when you’re in your element: Smooth and well-coordinated? Controlled chaos? A little of both? Perhaps it depends on the circumstances or the interpersonal team chemistry? 

My sense is that people are instinctively biased in favor of smooth workflows (e.g., slow is smooth, smooth is fast). Not to say everyone actually shares that preference, just that many of us are primed throughout our lives to think of smoothness and order as ideal. Paradoxically, I’ve simultaneously seen wide recognition in recent years that turbulent times tend to fuel growth—both individual and organizational—and reveal unexpected opportunities. 

So is one dynamic better than the other? Is there a magic formula we can use to settle the question? 

Well, of course not. That would be too easy. But if you’ve never thought about your preferences around team dynamics, or if it’s been a while, fluid dynamics offer a useful (and fun!) lens through which to explore these questions. Let’s dive in!

Theoretical Team :: Fluid Dynamics

In fluid dynamics, we see two main types of fluid flow—laminar (jargon for smooth) and turbulent—and a descriptive third type called transitional. A ratio called the Reynolds number (Re) turns out to be a helpful indicator of what type of flow we’re dealing with: a low Re points to laminar flow, and high to turbulent; a medium Re may indicate a transitional state.

At a fundamental level, Re compares a fluid’s forces with respect to its external environment (i.e., inertial forces) against a fluid’s forces with respect to its internal properties (i.e., viscous forces). 

Though these concepts might seem abstract, they’re more familiar than you might think. Here are a couple of examples.

* Water (low viscous forces) flows rapidly down a steep and narrow water slide (high inertial forces). The water is foamy, full of bubbles and eddies. This is turbulent flow.[HIGH inertial forces / LOW viscous forces]  →  HIGH Re  →  turbulent flow

* Honey (high viscous forces) slowly oozes out of a jar as you pour it into a bowl of granola (low inertial forces). The honey looks smooth and shiny throughout its journey from jar to bowl. This is laminar flow.

[LOW inertial forces / HIGH viscous forces]  →  LOW Re  →  laminar flow

Bringing this back to teams, we can draw parallels with viscous and inertial forces that illustrate how certain conditions may shape team dynamics.

Viscous forces & teams 

* We might imagine a team with high viscous forces as being steadfast and resistant to change, or tightly-coordinated and acting as a single unit. 

* On the flip side, we might imagine a team with low viscous forces as being quick to adapt and flexible, or loosely-associated individual agents or subteams.

Inertial forces & teams 

* We might imagine a team with high inertial forces as having a high operating tempo, or urgently working toward a specific objective. 

* On the flip side, we might imagine a team with low inertial forces as having a “slow and steady” operating tempo, or directionally aligned around a broad long-term vision. 

Perhaps this is too literal an approach, but drawing these parallels has been helpful for extrapolating different team dynamics in action—and importantly, the pros and cons in different contexts. 

Applied Team :: Fluid Dynamics

Speaking of different contexts, let’s apply these principles to real situations. 

Team :: Fluid dynamics as a design tool

Going back to our water slide example from above, imagine you’re designing a water slide. You make certain design choices intuitively, because even without any formal fluid dynamics knowledge, that intuition is rooted in your exposure to fluid dynamics throughout your life. 

For example, you wouldn’t opt to use a highly viscous fluid, like honey, for the slide because you’d want people to slide down it freely. (I know, I know, it’s called a “water” slide—but work with me here!) If you wanted a fast and exciting slide, you’d aim to increase inertial forces by making the slide steeply angled and narrow. If you wanted a more relaxing and meandering slide, you’d aim to decrease inertial forces by making the slide less angled and wider.

You can use those same intuitive fluid dynamics concepts to make design choices about teams. Here are some examples.

Situation 1

Your team is developing a new product. It’s early days, and although you have a strong grasp of the problem space, you’re still a ways from crystallizing a product vision, let alone landing product-market fit. You absolutely need a high degree of flexibility and adaptability at this point, along with team members who can work independently to explore different directions (low viscous forces). You also want a sense of urgency, along with fast feedback, testing, and iteration cycles that collectively bring focus to a still-fuzzy picture (high inertial forces). Yup, you guessed it—these are turbulent times! And that’s a good thing. The light chaos that comes from rapid ideation and learning is more likely to yield creative, differentiable, and valuable product ideas than a slow and steady trek through familiar territory.

Situation 2

Your team is exploring new ways to optimize the delivery of a well-established product. Business is good. You’re well-resourced, and there are no pressing financial or other issues, so we’re talking next-level optimization here—from solid to elite. However, you operate in a complex and complicated environment where even small changes can be expensive to implement and have unexpectedly outsize impact.Independent, proactive actors are more likely to hinder, not help, in this case. Tight coordination and alignment among your team are necessary, and changes to the status quo require a compelling reason (high viscous forces). At the same time, improving something that’s already pretty good will require openness and thoughtfulness, coupled with careful and methodical analyses (low inertial forces).This calls for a laminar flow state. You’re not trying to disrupt anything, only refine and perfect. Smooth, streamlined, steady are all words that come to mind.

At this point, it might be useful (fun?) to take other situations you’ve faced in your organization and think through how you might design your team dynamics using these fluid dynamics principles. Or starting from the other end: online searching led me to the fluid flow diagrams below, which I found interesting to think about in terms of team dynamics. Give it a try!

Team :: Fluid dynamics as a diagnostic tool

Sometimes, you get the sense that something is off. Your team’s not clicking, or it’s not performing in the way you’d expect. There may be dozens of underlying reasons, but a mismatch between the team dynamics you need versus those you have are a likely contender. To illustrate, let’s revisit our situations from the previous section.

Situation 1, revisited

Your team is successfully generating tons of product ideas, but they are mostly resulting in directionless churn. The team is feeling pulled in a million directions and showing signs of burnout. Diagnosis? It seems the team could use tighter collaboration. Learnings and insights need more synthesis, efforts need to be better coordinated, and decisions need to be aligned. Perhaps it’s time to make the team more viscous by adding more structure and rigidity to daily operations. In parallel, consider reducing inertia by building in processes that require the team to slow down, reflect, and be more focused.

Situation 2, revisited

Your team is hitting a wall when it comes to generating proposals for how to refine product delivery. All you’re seeing is more of the same, analysis paralysis, and no meaningful progress. The team seems frustrated, and engagement is starting to drop.

Diagnosis? Your team might need more freedom to explore the unknown. In this case, reducing viscosity could be helpful. Sure, maintain guardrails to avoid disaster, but creating opportunities for experimentation could go a long way. You could also increase inertia by adding a bit more pressure—albeit artificially—to generate motivation and excitement.

So there you have it: team dynamics through the lens of fluid dynamics! Hope that was as fun to read (or listen to) as it was to write. 

Do you have any favorite tech-to-something analogies? Would love to hear from you!

Over the past few years, I’ve been surprised to hear from more and more people relieved to discover that expressive leaders not only exist — but can also be successful. 

Why did this surprise me, you might ask? 

I suppose it’s because I thought I was alone on the Expressive Leaders Island. (And no, ChatGPT did not write that sentence. I’m just that dorky.) But it turns out that the rising draw of expressive leaders reflects the rising diversity of our workforce. Yet, the workplace is anything but ready to embrace expressive leaders. Why is this, and what can we do about it?

Let’s start with the notion of being authentic at work. Amidst the rising call to “be your authentic self,” I’ve observed that a license to authenticity is fine, so long as that authenticity stays within the bounds of norms — spoken and unspoken — of your organization. If your authentic self includes snuggling under a fluffy blanket laying down while working on your laptop, I’d venture to guess that part of you is not welcome at the office. But if your authentic self includes a healthy dose of witty sarcasm, the acceptability of that part of you will depend heavily on your organization’s culture.

In other words: be authentic, so long as it doesn’t challenge people’s expectations too much.

The pressure to at least moderately conform is particularly strong for organizational leaders. And for good reason: we need to believe a leader is effective in order to trust and follow them. Whether we like to admit it or not, most of us have deep biases around what constitutes an effective leader. For example, we tend to stereotype leaders as masculine, and associate effective leaders with stereotypically masculine traits. Unsurprisingly, we are more likely to trust and respect leaders who align with these stereotypes. 

That doesn’t mean we can’t learn to trust and respect leaders who deviate, or those who defy stereotypes or even create new ones altogether. After all, for low talking male executives, “quiet leadership” is increasingly in fashion. (I’m looking at you, Tim Cook.) But for most of us, this does not come naturally. We all have biases (yes, even you!) that help our brains make assessments about situations and people more quickly. Working around our biases can be extremely difficult. Even Daniel Kahneman, the late Nobel Prize winning cognitive psychologist, thinks so! 

For funsies, I’ll share one of my biases: I tend to think leaders who spend time on trivial matters, especially matters they should be delegating, are inept. Although this heuristic has typically proven accurate, it’s also pointed me in the wrong direction. In one instance, what seemed trivial to me was actually a marker for a major risk, and the leader in question had previous experience both spotting the marker and mitigating the risk. That case certainly didn’t “cure” my bias, but it did make me more aware of it and equipped me to confront it in the future.

So back to effective leaders: Since many of us are biased in favor of leaders who exhibit stereotypically masculine traits like self-confidence, stoicism, and gravitas — the prognosis isn’t great for the success of expressive leaders whose emotive range and exuberance are above-average. 

As a result, many expressive leaders ultimately subdue their expressiveness at great personal cost. This “authenticity tax” involves “dimming your light a bit, maybe toning down an aspect of your identity, just to fit in and avoid people's unconscious (and sometimes conscious) biases.” Women tend to fall in a much higher authenticity tax bracket, and women of color in the highest, in part because we are primed to perceive women as emotional and fragile (remember when female hysteria was a thing?) — quite the opposite of stoical and steadfast. This in turn undermines the perceived ability of women to be effective leaders. 

The resulting dynamics can sometimes border on the ridiculous. For example, the executive search firm Spencer Stuart explained, “Women can find themselves at a disadvantage in hiring or promotions when subjective measures such as ‘gravitas’ are used to evaluate candidates for senior roles — like the 5’2” female executive being compared to the 6’-plus male candidate on their ‘presence.’” As a result, women must generally work harder to exhibit, say, gravitas by consciously tempering their expressiveness. 

But in the end, there isn’t much a woman can do to grow from 5’2” to 6’, and we all remember the controversy Elizabeth Holmes’ artificially deep timbre drew. Ironically, women who embrace and exhibit stereotypically masculine traits — whether physical, like boxy clothing or character-based, like ambition — often face backlash. And even when a woman thinks she may have gotten the balance of [insert category] just right, research shows that she will still be perceived as “not quite right.” 

For clarity: This post is not exclusively about women. It’s about people with the ability to lead a team or organization to success, but who don’t necessarily fit the mold — a mold that happens to be stereotypically masculine. More specifically, this post is about expressive leaders who aren’t taken seriously because of their expressive nature.

As you can imagine, I probably wouldn’t be so attuned to this dynamic if I hadn’t had a peppering of fun encounters over the years with (usually well-meaning) people who have revealed to me their narrow understanding of what effective leaders look like: 

* As a young professional, a colleague criticized me for being "too smiley" and laughing too much to be seen as a credible leader — as if happiness was somehow incompatible with competence. To this person’s credit, they did follow-up with me later to admit they’d misjudged and congratulate me for a job well done. 

* When I was still working as a lawyer, a client consistently disregarded my input and talked over me. My style is pretty informal, and I was my happy self, so I can only guess what the client thought of me. One day during a call, the client narrated as he reviewed my LinkedIn profile. As soon as he noted my credentials, he presumably decided I was competent after all, and his attitude toward me suddenly shifted. He showed great deference to my advice going forward, even though I had changed nothing on my end. If the whole thing hadn’t been so distasteful, it would have been quite funny! 

* More recently, I was told after an interview loop for a senior role that my perceived lack of gravitas would make it difficult to earn respect from the C-suite. I ultimately accepted a lower-level role at this company. Unsurprisingly, the feedback about gravitas turned out to be a red flag for a culture mismatch between the org’s and my understandings around what strong leadership, communication, and diversity look like.

So… what’s a girl to take from these experiences? 

The learning-oriented side of me appreciates these situations as opportunities to enhance my interpersonal skills, understand others’ expectations, and improve my ability to foster trust. My more skeptical side sees these experiences as evidence that we desperately need to reshape “effective leader” stereotypes. 

In fact, these stereotypes aren’t universal. I frequently reference Erin Meyer’s The Culture Map as a reminder that different cultures hold different views on what good communication, disagreement, persuasion, and even leadership look like — and that not one is objectively right or wrong. In addition, the very meaning of leadership, and therefore what constitutes an effective leader, has been anything but static throughout history.

So the question is: Do we really want a world where leaders must suppress perfectly human elements of their personality and communication style to be taken seriously? Is it really the case that laughter, enthusiasm, and passion are fine when coming from a colleague but unprofessional liabilities when coming from a leader? In a world where we are in dire need of effective leaders, how many phenomenal people are we counting out because they don’t fit a particular mold with characteristics that have little to do with the ability to lead?

Or can we choose to evolve our view of what constitutes an effective leader?

People are inspired and motivated by different leadership styles. Presumably, this includes expressive leadership styles. What may come across as unprofessional giggling to one person may evoke engagement and trust to someone else. And hey, expressive people need role models too! In fact, I recently received unsolicited feedback (which inspired this post in the first place): “Your enthusiastic approach to what is often perceived as dry and ‘any other business’ has given me tools to bring [data, digital, and all things privacy] to life…. You are a great role model for women in leadership, especially those of us who are colourful and expressive as well as thoroughly intelligent. I could see your authenticity in every encounter.”

Now, I get that feeling frustrated about leader stereotypes and unconscious bias is a little like shaking your fist at the sky and yelling out that life isn’t fair. 

But let’s admit that the call to bring your authentic self to work isn’t completely honest. There are standards and norms, after all — and this is mostly a good thing. We may not all have to wear suits and ties to the office anymore, but we can’t show up like we’ve been living in the woods for a year. Companies implicitly and explicitly establish norms by publishing values statements, cultivating organizational cultures, and subjectively evaluating employees’ so-called soft skills. This veneer of propriety — however thin it may be — is what many philosophers argue enables our ordered and civilized way of living (and working). 

So my call to action is not to do away with standards and norms, but it does involve better understanding their limitations.

First, let’s try harder to be aware of our own biases around people’s behavior, character, and appearance. This can be difficult, but trying will get you farther than not! Then couple this with a “sister” call to action, which is to commit to thinking critically and charitably about the leadership aptitude and capability of people who don’t fit your mold. 

So if you discover you prefer polished, stoical leaders, challenge yourself to explore whether your less-refined, effusive young team member might nevertheless be a fantastic lead for that new cross-functional project. Or if you learn you’re a judgy judgerson when it comes to casual appearances at work, challenge yourself to engage primarily with the substantive contributions of that jeans-wearing team member who nevertheless demonstrates promising people management skills. 

Successful leaders don't fit a monolithic mold. 

As we all nod in agreement with this sentence like good people, we should also acknowledge we still have preferences and biases that lead our minds to automatically — and perhaps even subconsciously — categorize a perfectly capable person as an ineffective leader. And these preferences and biases tend to place expressive people into that category. 

So let’s do better and (at least try to) judge leaders by their skills, experience, and results — not how smiley or serious they appear. Let’s embrace those leaders who model the authenticity we claim to value. While stoical leaders may bring a sense of stability and authority to the workplace, expressive leaders may bring a sense of excitement, engagement, and approachability. It’s all good.

Though I will say: this world could use more people who don't take themselves too seriously. ;-)

Postscript. Speaking of authenticity, writing this post helped me come to terms with something about myself. In a world that apparently exists only inside my own mind, I am this super witty person who can take serious ideas and wrap them up in pithy little packages. As it turns out, however — and I’m apparently the last to know — I’m actually an earnest nerd with a sense of humor that, if we’re being generous, could be categorized as ‘quirky’. Sigh. 

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One of my most valuable lessons on leading high performing teams came from a CEO I previously worked with. 

It took me a while to assess whether I’d see the same great results as the CEO by putting this lesson into practice. I’m happy to report that I did—which is why I’m thrilled to share the lesson with you, in the hopes you’ll enjoy similarly great results.

Let me start by telling you about this CEO. This guy was a big deal. He’d been at the tippy top of a global financial firm. Eventually, he exited that world and entered the world of startups. He eventually became the CEO of a startup he ultimately led through a successful acquisition by a well-known global organization. 

But his impressive track record isn’t the full picture (it never is!). He was super cool and somehow managed to foster a working environment that was simultaneously focused and relaxed; productive and creative; execution-oriented and thoughtful; mission-driven and people-focused; serious and joyful.  

You can see why I admired his leadership style and wanted to learn from him. And I learned a ton! 

But one thing in particular stood out and stuck with me. That’s the lesson I’m sharing with you today. 

(Okay, okay, getting to the point after all that preamble!)

The lesson is this: Assume—and internalize the assumption—that each member of your team is highly competent.

Yep, that’s it. Pretty simple, and it goes a long way. 

Of course, as with anything, there are tactics and pitfalls to be mindful of. But before I get into the ‘How’, let’s start with a different question…

Why? Because, in terms of impact, nine times out of ten your team will respond not only by meeting, but exceeding, your expectations. By showing up with an assumption of high competence, you’ll cultivate a high trust environment in which your team’s confidence in themselves, each other, and you will grow. This, in turn, will feed a culture of personal excellence and curiosity. With these foundations in place, what you’ll have is a rock-solid, high-performing team.

Now turning back to the ‘How’. Below is a sample list of tactics, followed by a list of pitfalls. 

Tactics. 

* Lead with curiosity about your team members’ roles. Ask about the nature of their work, their specialized skills, and how they collaborate with others. Give them an opportunity to share details about the work they’re most proud of. Fearlessly admit when you don’t understand something and ask follow-up questions. 

* Engage with your team’s expertise. Ask how they’re solving a problem or thinking about a challenge. Invite their perspectives and learnings. Eliminate from your mind any tendency to be the smartest person in the room. Some prompts to get you started: “Have you seen this type of challenge before?” “How would you approach this problem?”

* Recognize your team’s potential. Ask for advice on questions ‘above their paygrade’. Be candid about what’s on your mind; share what you’re excited about, as well as what you’re worried about. Take in their fresh perspectives and be sure to let them know if you’ve implemented their advice. 

Pitfalls. 

* You don’t actually believe in your team’s competence. This all falls apart if you don’t have confidence in your team’s ability to meet or exceed expectations. And if you don’t hold this belief, it’s important to explore why (is it you? is it your team?) and work to address it.  

* You don’t hold each other accountable. This is such an important antidote to ensuring your team’s confidence doesn’t turn into arrogance. At the same time, you will need to balance this with normalizing failure and learning from suboptimal decisions, outcomes, etc. 

* You’re feeling a lot of pressure. This could be coming from your manager, or accountability for delivering an ambitious goal, or a lack of self-confidence. High pressure can invite enemies of high-performing teams, like micromanagement. The key to thwarting these enemies is to establish your healthy team culture from the get-go so you’re not digging yourself (and your team) out of a confidence hole.

So there you have it: Assume competence!

Give it a try. You’ll be amazed at the results.

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A couple of years ago, we lost our 14 year old Weimaraner, Adicus. Anyone who knew Adicus (and anyone who’s spent time with Weimaraners in general) knows just how big his presence was. He was our best buddy, most demanding aristocrat, most loving companion.

Years later, we still feel his presence. And he left me with three important life lessons I’ve been meaning to share. But I haven’t been quite up to it, until now. (It helps that we have a new addition to our family, an English Setter rescue we call Louis. He’s a free-spirited sprite who has filled our lives with heaps of laughter and joy!)

What’s remarkable is that Adicus’ life lessons align perfectly with classic math & physics principles. Perhaps this is not so surprising and reflects the deep wisdom and beauty of the laws of nature. After all, as Bertrand Russell said, “Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty.”

So here you go: three life lessons from Math, Physics, and Adicus!

Life Lesson 1

“I am here, make room” | Archimedes’ Principle

Whenever Adicus walked into a room, you knew it. He wanted to be noticed. If you were sitting on the sofa or a chair, he would plop down just close enough that you had to scooch over to make room. Adicus was never apologetic about his own presence. He was self-assured and knew his worth – and wanted you to know his worth, too. 

His example was particularly powerful for me. Growing up as a child, I became aware early on that my natural exuberance, curiosity, and zeal could overwhelm people (I only recently learned there is an official label for people like me called ‘giftedness’). I also learned over the years that most people don’t like women – especially smiley, curly haired women – to be assertive, outspoken, and strong-willed. So as an adult, I practiced making myself smaller and quieter. 

Though many of you who know me may question my success in this (hey, I try!), the unexpected impact was that I internalized my own smallness and quietness. I inadvertently learned to be apologetic about asking for people’s time, seeking help, and even existing. I doubted my own value and was worried people would dislike me if they could feel my presence.

But Adicus showed me you can be your exuberant self and still be lovable and loved. He helped me reconnect with my self-worth. Adicus reminded me that I am made of matter, and I matter. 

Adicus’ “I am here, make room” attitude is like Archimedes’ Principle, which explains why an object placed in fluid will displace that fluid. 

Just as the fluid has to “make room” for a submerged object, Adicus unapologetically expected people to “make room” for him. And my takeaway is that I – we all – should not be afraid to ask people to “make room” for us. 

Though it’s a lesson one could easily overlearn, for me, for now, it’s spot on!

Life Lesson 2

“Find wonder in the routine” | Fourier Transform

As adult life becomes more demanding, I increasingly cherish sleep. I’m sure many of you can relate. So bedtime is a very exciting time of day. 

Adicus apparently picked up on this. Although he once resisted going to bed and settling in for the night, he came to love bedtime, just like me. Over time, we developed a bedtime routine: I would sing the word, ‘bedtime’; he would joyfully run to his bed and plop down, expecting to be promptly tucked in and sung to.

His bedtime routine was unbearably cute. But it could also be a drag, especially when I was exhausted and didn’t feel like tucking in or singing. And this was true for many of his routines: his extended evening bunny hunting walk; his expectation that we top his kibble with cooked chicken every meal; his anti-grooming ritual involving phases of evasion, then passive resistance, and finally reluctant but dramatic acceptance (think dignified death march). 

Despite the inconvenience and sometimes seeming mundanity of these routines, they became our go-to “classic Adicus” stories. In retrospect, they are some of our fondest memories.

And this is how Adicus taught me that the simplest, everyday routines are magic moments in disguise. 

Adicus helped me realize that many of the most important moments in life occur experientially, not sequentially. In other words, one bedtime sequence is super cute. But a collective experience of daily bedtime routines is heart-melting. I wouldn’t trade the bedtime routine experience – however inconvenient or mundane it may have felt at times – for anything. 

Finding the beauty and wonder lurking within the noise of the daily grind is a lot like how Fourier Transforms find signal in the noise. For example, a Fourier Transform can help you identify chimes or chirping birds that are otherwise shrouded in ambient noise.

The Fourier Transform does this by transforming sequential noise – what you would hear with your ear – into frequencies. You can then see and focus on frequencies of interest. Similarly, “transforming” Adicus’ routines from sequential chronicles into collective experiences helped me find wonder in those routines and see the extraordinary in the ordinary.

And it’s a reminder to take a step back and do this “transformation” more frequently – before all that wonder is only a memory.

Life Lesson 3

“Don’t preserve life, live it” | Integral of a Curve

Adicus was rarely concerned with preserving himself beyond the basics (eating, sleeping, etc.). Even as he got older, he would never let aches and pains keep him from chasing bunnies or playing. Though he did adapt to new physical limitations as they evolved, he never stopped doing the things he loved. 

Now, Adicus was a genetic phenom. He loved using his physicality and showing off his athleticism. One memory in particular stands out: We were hiking through the woods, and he decided to go off-trail. As he romped through fallen leaves and broken branches, he came upon a choice: go straight for a clear path or fork left for a dramatic leap over a log. 

You can guess which one he chose. True to form, he landed beautifully and kept going. The sheer joy on his face was enough to make anyone smile ear to ear.

Of course, his leap could easily have gone wrong. He could have missed the landing and hurt himself badly. In fact, we were often tempted to protect him from himself. And in some cases we did step in, like when he wanted to chase bunnies into a traffic-heavy road. But we came to realize that Adicus’ go big or go home attitude was an intrinsic part of his character and essential to his self-actualization (to the extent dogs self-actualize). 

We could have ensured a super safe life for Adicus, but he would have felt perpetually depressed and deprived. He would not have been living his life but rather passing the time. 

All of us navigate through life managing risks. We protect ourselves and loved ones from harm and danger. This is normal – essential even.

But what I learned from Adicus is that if we skew too far in favor of safety and security, we create a new and paradoxically depleting risk: living a long life devoid of the very things that make us feel alive. 

The integral of a curve can help us visualize a mathematical representation of Adicus’ “quality of life over quantity of life” philosophy. Imagine a curve, f(x), on a graph that represents the quality of your life at any given time. You can think of the area under that curve – which we would calculate by integrating f(x) – as your Total Life Quality. 

Picture it: If you have a very long life curve with low quality levels over time, the area under that curve – your Total Life Quality – will be small. On the other hand, if your quality of life levels over time are higher, then even if your life curve turns out to be a little shorter, your Total Life Quality will be greater.

I don’t know about you, but when it’s time for me to go – morbid as it may be to think about – I’d rather look back and say: ‘I lived an awesome, full life’ than ‘I lived a long, riskless life’. Which is why, like Adicus, I don’t want to preserve my life. I want to live it.

Jack London (via James Bond in ‘No Time to Die’) perhaps said it best: “The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

RIP Adicus.