One nuance that gets missed in “hire great people, then get out of their way” is that great people often want more influence, support, advocacy, etc. so they really don’t want you to get out of the way completely. But they do want trust & confidence.
Special thanks, John, for the concise differentiation between systems small enough to handle and systems designed and nurtured over the years for support. Do you have more thoughts about successful transitions (a company type #1.5 not falling back to #1 but making progress towards #2)? Maybe Jeff Bezos underwent a personal growth journey from working in the system to working on the system that leaders only relying on good hires have not (yet) gone through. And if this is a good framing: how do you know as a leader that your growing company needs you to focus more on the organization? How do you get support for "learning" organization design?
Interesting and difficult, indeed. Great perspective. Not noted in your list of caveats (at a certain scale) is where ICs are often thrust into leadership roles for simply being a good IC. As I’ve worked for both #1 & #2-type companies I’ve often found this to be the paradox of “just hire talented people and empower them.”
It sounds so easy conceptually, but so many companies fail around this. The big reason I see this not working is because the company has created a machine to get in people's way and that machine has to keep running. It's the constant pre-scheduled checkins, updates, team presentations, board updates that do the exact opposite of "getting out the way." So in order for this to work, you need to make exceptions to how the machine works.
One nuance that gets missed in “hire great people, then get out of their way” is that great people often want more influence, support, advocacy, etc. so they really don’t want you to get out of the way completely. But they do want trust & confidence.
Special thanks, John, for the concise differentiation between systems small enough to handle and systems designed and nurtured over the years for support. Do you have more thoughts about successful transitions (a company type #1.5 not falling back to #1 but making progress towards #2)? Maybe Jeff Bezos underwent a personal growth journey from working in the system to working on the system that leaders only relying on good hires have not (yet) gone through. And if this is a good framing: how do you know as a leader that your growing company needs you to focus more on the organization? How do you get support for "learning" organization design?
Interesting and difficult, indeed. Great perspective. Not noted in your list of caveats (at a certain scale) is where ICs are often thrust into leadership roles for simply being a good IC. As I’ve worked for both #1 & #2-type companies I’ve often found this to be the paradox of “just hire talented people and empower them.”
It sounds so easy conceptually, but so many companies fail around this. The big reason I see this not working is because the company has created a machine to get in people's way and that machine has to keep running. It's the constant pre-scheduled checkins, updates, team presentations, board updates that do the exact opposite of "getting out the way." So in order for this to work, you need to make exceptions to how the machine works.