Layers of Work
Lessons from operating at the organizational layer
The current shift toward AI-assisted software delivery is often framed through an individual lens. Will engineers lose relevance? Will coding still matter?
A client showed us their designs. Among them, an animated globe. Core to the UI delightfulness, technically non-trivial, the kind of thing that usually gets a "we'll figure it out during development" footnote in proposals. I decided to check how hard it actually was.
Most people treat promotions like gifts. They say yes immediately, afraid the offer might disappear. Then six months later they're drowning in a role they never properly understood, working for someone they wouldn't have chosen, wondering what went wrong.
You can read dozens of leadership books and still not know whether your boss is any good. Most frameworks are either too abstract ("be authentic!") or too narrow ("here's how to run a 1:1"). Here is a list of traits I actually look for when evaluating leaders - whether I'm hiring, promoting, or figuring out if the person above me is worth following.
Leadership development focuses on charisma, empathy, vision, communication. All important. But they miss the foundation: logical consistency.
You hire people you think are great performers. Their performance turns out average.
Simon Sinek's "Start With Why" is one of the most influential business ideas of the last decade. If you've been told to paint the vision first and work backward from there, to inspire people with the future before worrying about details, you're following advice that sounds transformative but often paralyzes organizations in practice.
Leaders love to give HR teams ambitious missions. Build culture. Create belonging. Drive engagement. HR believes it. They run employee surveys, launch initiatives, mediate problems between people and managers. They work hard. They mean well.
If you're a CEO who genuinely values collaborative strategy and thoughtful decision-making, but you keep watching months pass with no real progress, you might be facing something uncomfortable to recognize: your greatest strengths as a leader might be exactly what's creating paralysis in your organization.