Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

the most important job of management is to focus really intently on the building of great teams.

Great teams are made when every single member knows where they’re going and will do anything to get there. Great teams are not created with incentives, procedures, and perks. They are created by hiring talented people who are adults and want nothing more than to tackle a challenge, and then communicating to them, clearly and continuously, about wha

Here is my radical proposition: a business leader’s job is to create great teams that do amazing work on time. That’s it. That’s the job of management.

One of the biggest mistakes is fixating on metrics that don’t matter.

“Can you help me understand what leads you to believe that’s true?”

Your people can handle the truth, straight and in person, and so can you.

how often do you think companies drop the ball when it comes to customer service, despite all the talk about improving the customer experience?

Too often upper management thinks that sharing about problems confronting the business will heighten anxiety among staff, but what’s much more anxiety provoking is not knowing. You can’t protect your people from hard truths anyway. And holding back the truth, or telling them half-truths, will only breed contempt.

When leaders not only are open to being wrong but also readily admit it—as Reed did that day, and regularly did—and when they do so publicly, they send a powerful message to their teams: Please speak up!