The Infinite Loops Guide to... Leadership
"Influence is the currency of leadership." ~Brooke Skinner Ricketts
1. Dr. Pippa Malmgren | Be a Worldbuilder
“Phil Knight, when he created Nike, he always said, ‘I'm not creating shoes, I'm creating a space where you can be a weekend warrior, where you can be a hero not for winning, but for just entering the race,’ or Steve Jobs who said, ‘I'm not making computers. I'm creating a world where bright people don't have to think about their computers. I'm creating a world where you can think different.’ So this business of world creating, that's leadership. The business of getting [the] right quarterly report numbers, that's management. They're profoundly different things. I think we've become way too focused on getting the number right instead of getting the story straight."
More from Dr. Malmgren: Why Leadership Has Gone Wrong (Ep. 167)2. Jacqueline Novogratz | Be Humble
“And in this time where we see growing, I dare say, moral righteousness, the definition that we have here at Acumen for moral leadership is even more uncomfortable because I see so often on social media a desire to be affirmed in what you know is right. And that is the righteousness piece. Rather than to hold a sense of humility in this time of great uncertainty that we've got to find that space between right and wrong, right doing and wrong doing, we've got to acknowledge truths that each other bring to the table even when we disagree or we are not going to solve our problems.”
More from Jacqueline: Manifesto for a Moral Revolution (Ep. 205)3. Bojan Tunguz | Embrace Messiness
“I also think there's a lot of problems in the way that the software projects get structured […] a lot of people want to have a very clean way of structuring the projects, where in the reality, there's a lot of messiness that people learn how to work around and even leverage to get ahead. But a lot of central planners don't take these things into account and you end up with a much more bloated and slower software than it really should be.”
More from Bojan: From Physicist to Grandmaster (Ep. 182)4. Alex Komoroske | Carve Out Time Away From Bullshit
“And so when I tell people this, that, all the game-changing ideas I've ever had came out of that time, they go, ‘Oh, that must be so nice. I just don't have the time for that.’ And it's like the mundane bullshit will cover every square inch you give it. You have to make the time for that. Everybody always, especially a type A, hardworking person, will constantly be busy. Of course you will. Of course you will. And so the question is ‘what are you going to make the time to do?’ And so it's this ‘important but not urgent.’ It requires a boldness, a certain boldness to create space for, because people will think that you're being a kooky weirdo and you're kicking your feet up. And to some degree, if they watch you, you are. You're sitting there, you're thinking to yourself, maybe going on a walk, but they don't see the value creation because it seems so indirect.”
More from Alex: Complex Adaptivity All The Way Down (Ep. 208)| Batman Was Wrong (our synthesis)5. Alex Lieberman | Operate Above the Line
“There's this book called 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. I don't know if you've ever read it, but it's the best book on leadership I've ever read. I just continue to read it, I'm always reading it, I'm always just referencing it. It's by this organization that's called the Conscious Leadership Group, my executive coach is trained in conscious leadership, and it basically talks about all of us are always existing either above the line or below the line. Above the line is operating from a place of love, curiosity, growth and abundance. Below the line is from a place of fear, scarcity, defensiveness, et cetera. And [it] basically goes through how to both identify whether at any given time you're above the line or below the line, but also ways in which you can shift from below the line to above the line, as in extrinsic to intrinsic, or fear-based to growth-based.”
More from Alex: On Voice, Unicorns & Intrinsic Motivation (Ep. 192)6. Anna Gát | Silence Your Inner Quarrel
“And I think people who somehow have this delusion that they have license to do great things, or at least to try… unless you're a psychopath, you are not necessarily driven by hubris. You are driven by the weird and strange realization that anybody could do it. It's going to be equally super difficult for everybody. Are you happy with living your life in a super difficult way? It's the same as running a big event. When you are running it, it doesn't matter who you are. And I’m not saying, this is not ‘having low self-confidence’ or ‘not having a strong enough sense of self.’ It’s, you need to be able to put aside yourself for the task, whatever that is. Whether that's listening to somebody, building a big company, running a big artistic project, building a beautiful family. Know when to silence the inner quarrel to be able to get the job done.”
More from Anna: We Digress (Ep. 211) | Learning Through Discussion (Ep. 38)7. Shreyas Doshi | Be Invisible
“[T]here are many different ways to lead. You can be the visible leader, but the one that resonated most with me was that of an invisible leader. I like to work behind the scenes and get people to align towards the vision. When you do that and when you successfully do that, it looks like magic. It looks like inception, because they think it's their ideas. They kind of are. All I did is probe and prompt and ask the right questions, and then the right idea emerged. All I did is kind of nudge them in the right direction, but now they own it. Yes, I'm not going to necessarily get the same credit versus if I were a visible leader, but that's because our organizations are flawed today. So, I don't need to necessarily change myself and my approach and what really resonates with me and what brings me joy, simply to yield to the imperfect way or the suboptimal way in which organizations operate today. I would rather be an invisible leader.”
More from Shreyas: Making of a Great Leader (Ep. 118)8. Jimmy Soni | If You Feel Like an Imposter, Do It Anyway
"[E]very single person you think is successful, also believes they are the imposter. That is totally, it's a fact of life. When you go and really peer into the lives of the people who are the greats and the people who thought they've... You think they've got it all figured out, maybe not now, but at some point in their lives they thought they were gigantic imposters, and some of them still do, and they still do it anyway.”
More from Jimmy: The Courage of Creative Risk (Ep. 214) | Make Things, and Be Playful (Ep.108) | Unleashing the Future of Publishing (Ep. 157)9. Lulu Cheng Meservey | Be an Insurgent
"So I studied counterinsurgency in my past, and I think about things through that lens, which is if you're an insurgent, which is to say you're not the incumbent, you're not the state, you're not working with the money and the military might, what you need to do is look for asymmetric advantages. And the asymmetric advantages that an insurgent has, there's a long list, but some of the top ones are you're native to the internet. That is your home territory. So insurgents in the real world will choose their territory to fight on, right? It might be the forest, it might be the jungle, the beaches, whatever. Here, you know your networks on the internet. You also probably have a network of other founders and investors who are of similar belief. You also probably have more courage, backbone, and conviction than the other side. So this is when you think of 300 Spartans at Thermopylae holding off 10,000 Persians for three days. How are they able to do that? It's because they're fighting for different things. It's because they're full-time warriors. It wasn't they were sent out to do a task. This is how startup founders carry their message into the world against incumbents, and I think it's a huge underrated advantage, asset to use.”
More from Lulu: Going Direct: What Founders can learn from K-Pop, Crypto, and the Early Christians (Ep. 133)10. Dr. Julie Gurner | Abandon Plan B
“But for people who do have a solid runway, you know exactly what you want to do. You do have some resources. I think when you have a Plan B, Plan B becomes the fallback when things get hard and it haunts you because you'll say, ‘Well, I don't have to be doing this. I could be doing X.’ Or it gives you a mental waffling that you otherwise would not have. And without that, you have to have the fortitude to see through it to the other side.”
More from Dr. Gurner: Ultra Successful (Ep. 176)
Can confirm 15 commitments of conscious leadership is the best book on leadership I've ever read. I read it when I was in my first ever leadership role and it still guides me today.
Great quotes / books today. Thank you.