THE LEAFLET
September 21 2023
strategy is a sexy distraction, your ontology is showing, optimize upstream
STRATEGY IS A SEXY DISTRACTION
Strategy is sexy, expensive, elite. It’s for smart people; influential people; sweatless, well-manicured, well-paid people.
Alas, “strategy” as it is often described and desired doesn’t really exist.
In the life of a team with a mission, there is doing and deciding.
That’s it! That’s the list.
All action on the team, even the CEO’s, should be doing or deciding.
Read the rest here.
YOUR ONTOLOGY IS SHOWING
As a leader, your ontology matters. It’s worth getting clear on it. When it comes to your people and your shared efforts, what are your deepest, most core beliefs? More specifically, what are your answers to these two questions:
What do you believe we’re here for? Not just “we” at this company or on this team, but “we” as, like, humanity. What are people for?
What’s the best we can hope for? From this teammate, in this moment, from this shared endeavor?
Part of what you’re offering to your people, even in the mundane exchange of emails and Slack messages, is this ontology. You’re offering a take on what it means to be human, why we’re here, what is worthy of effort, what is the best we can hope for.
Read the rest here.
OPTIMIZE UPSTREAM
A skillful leader once used a muffin cart to teach me how valuable it is to “optimize upstream.” You can spend (waste) a ton of energy getting really good, genuinely really good, at solving problems that wouldn’t even exist if you put your attention on solving an upstream problem first.
Instead of becoming an amazing firefighter who leaps through windows and rescues babies and skillfully wields a hose and ax while breathing toxic smoke, install a smoke detector. Instead of practicing high-stress communication techniques in a super-loud hallway with teenagers who have suffered multiple acute traumas…move the muffin cart.
Solve the problem that prevents other problems.
Read the rest here.
Keep going, keep growing,
Eric