Leadership

In community building I have a reputation for being the guy that starts something, draws a few people in, builds the people up and then steps back when they are comfortable in their new leadership role. Bringing up people around me to replace myself is a leadership style Simon Sinek calls "leading from the back". It comes natural to me but definitely not to everyone. Leadership in business is normally leading by position, not leading by authority. This often leads to a very brittle power structure that hinges on a sole decision maker. In a well structured organisation decision making can move down and out. Encouraging people to make decisions and own them makes them happier and more productive. Meeting rates drop and the velocity of the organisation is going up.

Organisations with a sole leader run at the velocity of that sole gatekeeper who needs to reason about everything. In an organisation where people have agency the velocity is at the pace of the sum of all leaders. Fast paced organisations and those that pay attention to staff happieness create environments where agency is key.

Having leaders responsible and authoritative to make decisions also reduces the reliance on any single person. In business this is called the bus factor. When one person gets hit by a bus, how big is the business impact. I always try to get that as low as possible because people move on, for all sorts of reasons, and designing for that goes back to designing an antifragile system. A side effect of leading from the back is creating an environment of trust and agency. People stay longer because they feel heard, valued and can create visible impact. This also reduces burnout as people can take holidays or even extended sabbaticals with no handover needed.