THE LEAFLET
August 01 2024
a bet you shouldn’t hedge, useful friction with legal, look for “the lean”
A BET YOU SHOULDN’T HEDGE
If you are leading an organization, you’ve made one central bet already. A core, maybe the core, of your strategy is “doing stuff through other people.” You’re betting that you can get more done through other people than you can get done by yourself. Otherwise, you’d be free-lancing or consulting, solo.
A responsible leader, someone with a deep sense of ownership, someone who cares about all the details, can lose sight of that central bet. Instead of following the premise to its logical conclusion, that responsible leader can hedge against it, over and over, until it loses much of its force.
What I mean is: if your central bet is on people, you’re probably well served to invest heavily in the moves that will a) get you great people to start with and b) make those people even greater and more powerful as you go.
A very challenging part of b) for responsible leaders is handing over important things to people, even when you know you could do those things better. Arguably, you’re not really doing b) without the handoff of the important, uncertain stuff - things that matter and that could go wrong. Doing those things, getting feedback, doing them better - that’s how they grow.
That’s how you tilt the odds in your favor on your most central bet.
-Eric
Read the rest here.
CHOOSE THE USEFUL FRICTION WITH LEGAL
A couple guardrails to consider:
If you’re a leader, you shouldn’t outsource all your judgment about risk to your lawyer.
If you’re a leader, you shouldn’t treat your lawyer as a magician who wa(i)ves away legal obstacles.
Following both rules puts you and your lawyer in a frictional, discursive pattern. You have to figure things out together - neither person gets to dogmatically force the hand of the other. You have to refine and revise, likely over a high volume of decisions sorted out together, what the risk appetite of the organization is.
Good lawyers do more than fill in template agreements and redline contracts. They run multi-factor tests; they balance weird game-theoretic dynamics; they size up tradeoffs.
Sharp, wise lawyers have taught me that they do their best work, the good ones do, when they get to look at problems with you long before they are legal problems, strictly speaking.
-Eric
Read the rest here.
I LOOK FOR “THE LEAN”
The leaders I’ve loved working for and learning from are very different from one another. A gamut of personalities and preferences.
A thing they all have in common, though, is “the lean”. They all seem to be leaning into the wind - they are pushing back against some big external force. They are doing this by default and on purpose, all at once. They couldn’t sit still in the face of things as they are. Complacency is unavailable to them.
Some convey the lean with deadlines; some do it with high standards; some do it with a deep sense of responsibility to a client or cause. However they lean, they are unafraid of unsettling you. They don’t care much how they look as they lean.
The force they’re fighting is bigger than they are. So is the principle they’re beholden to. Ego and comfort fall far lower in the list of concerns.
-Eric
Read the rest here.
COMPELLING QUOTES
FDR advisor Harry Hopkins on timelines:
People don’t eat in the long run. They eat every day.
Champion of reform Eleanor Roosevelt on hard work:
Anybody is happy and content when fully functioning. Even when the problems are very great, full functioning is such a rare experience that it’s quite pleasing.
Writer James Baldwin on reading:
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
Keep going, keep growing,
Ben & Eric