The Two Levers of Leadership

I recently came across a post by Jeffrey Snover - not knowing who he was, to my shame - about a speech that Satya Nadella - this one I knew - gave to Microsoft executives.

I thought it was simple, hard-hitting, and relevant to me as I moved into more leadership roles. And it really changed the way I look at leadership execution.

TL;DR: Stop whining, do the best you can with what you have been given.

From Resource to Leader

As an individual contributor, I found myself always thinking in terms of resource. I am, after all, a resource, and there is only so much of me to go around. In some sense, that was my lever to pull; if you want me to produce more, you should figure out how to make me more efficient, or more invested - and thus more willing to spend my focus on producing more.

The leader cannot operate at this level. That’s not to say the same incentives are not relevant, but the lever is different, and success looks different.

Satya Nadella poses two levers for the leader. Resource allocation, and Leadership; clarity, culture and energy.

It’s too simple to call these levers; each one is a whole course of study on its own. But the point stands, these are what the leader can control in order to manufacture success.

We all have less control than we think

I will admit that I have - and still do - had the thought that management/leadership ‘just don’t understand the ground’. While that may be true, and my complaint may be very real, I see now that leadership often has much less agency than we think.

A CEO is still bound by the business reality around them. The board could be against them, or the market they are forced to cover is unfavorable, or there is not enough money to hire the people they really want… so on and so on. Satya Nadella’s point to them is simple; stop whining, figure out how to succeed with the hand you were dealt.

This reminds me a lot of the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. The master is explicitly called out as harsh, and the servants have two different reactions to that. And indeed, so can we.

A Message to Myself

Leadership is difficult. If it was easy, everyone would be a leader. In fact, it is quite the opposite; even a good leader can look like they are doing a bad job, even if they are doing their very best. It’s tempting to complain in that situation, and in fact very natural. But it is not leadership.

A message to myself, more so than anyone else: Stop whining, build and run the systems, create success.