Be strict with yourself and tolerant of others

Imagine you’re in a race with competitors flanking you on both sides.

After the starting pistol goes off, there’s a strong temptation to keep an eye on them. You want to see how fast they’re going, whether they’re gaining ground on you. But the more you look, the more you lose your own rhythm and risk stumbling behind.

I’ve seen the same thing happen to organizations and individuals alike. They have competitors – or peers – that they can’t stop keeping an eye on. Maybe it’s FOMO, or just traditional fear, but with every bit of ground a competitor seems to gain, there’s a risk of losing focus on your own lane.

Competitors exist, of course. Awareness is smart, but constant reaction is not.

You need to know your space and who’s in it, but you also need to establish your lane and own it. Someone else’s path is not the path for you. Comparison often disguises itself as clarity, but it usually leads to distraction, loss of direction, and even resentment

Run your own race in your own lane.

One of the reasons I struggled in Spanish class was that I often confused the past tense with the imperfect tense. They looked similar, sounded similar, and both referred to the past… but they weren’t interchangeable.

Strategy and tactics are like that. Easy to confuse, but they play very different roles. It’s a common mistake, and I experience it often.

Think of strategy as the destination and tactics as the directions.

A good strategic goal should be simple and brief:

Increase brand saliency with Gen Z
Diversify donor base across three new geographic regions
Create a strong culture with above-average retention rates

The tactics are in the weeds: partner with Gen Z influencers, host fundraising events in X, Y, and Z cities, launch monthly employee surveys.

A quick gut check to help differentiate the two:

• If changing it would shift the overall goal, it’s the strategy
• If changing it would leave the goal intact but change how you get there, it’s a tactic

Strategy sets the direction, and tactics are the steps. If you and your team aren’t clear on the difference, you’ll end up debating details when you should be defining goals.

I’ve sometimes seen a desire to throw $100,000 in salary and benefits at a “bandwidth problem” when it’s really just a prioritization problem.

Sometimes, hiring is absolutely the right decision. But sometimes, the better solution isn’t hiring, it’s doing fewer things better.

Before you hire, ask these questions:

• Are we trying to do too much? The instinct to say yes to everything creates artificial capacity problems. What if the issue isn’t a lack of people, but a lack of focus?
• Can we cut or pause lower-priority projects? Every initiative competes for attention. Which ones could you shelve without meaningfully impacting your core objectives?
• Are we clear on what actually created results? If you can’t identify your highest-impact activities, adding more people just increases the confusion.
• Could we streamline operations or automate some work first? Process improvements and automation often free up more bandwidth than a new hire, without the ongoing cost.

Hiring should be a strategic growth move, not a reflex to wrangle chaos. Sometimes the real answer isn’t adding people, it’s tightening focus.

Every organization lives with the risk of someone being “hit by a bus.”

What happens if your development director, programs manager, or events coordinator suddenly disappears? For most orgs, the answer is chaos.

That’s because critical processes live in someone’s head, not in a shared place. There isn’t a playbook, a checklist, or documentation in sight.

A lack of process documentation isn’t just a risk for the worst-case scenarios, but also for common ones: someone quits, goes on leave, or changes roles. In those moments, you can be stuck scrambling to piece together how things worked, falling behind for months.

People leaving the organization is inevitable. It’s sad when they’re someone who does so much, but it doesn’t have to be devastating if you document the process.

Some tips for process documentation:

• Start with the recurring tasks: Anything that happens monthly, quarterly, or annually – think reports, events, renewals, or donor touchpoints efforts – is worth documenting.
• Use a format that fits: Paragraphs of text about how something is done is rarely the best approach. Whether it’s a checklist, timeline, screen recording, flowchart, or simple bullets, make the format fit the process.
• Record the who, what, and when: Ownership and timelines around each step are just as important as the step itself. Who do you work with to do that thing? When does it happen? Capture those details.
• Perfection isn’t the goal: When you start documenting, don’t focus on making it perfect – it can be messy and a little incomplete. Get a draft, then refine it over time.
• Store it somewhere central: For most process-related info, my org uses Confluence as a “wiki,” but any platform works as long as everyone has access and knows where to find it.
• Update regularly: Processes change from time to time. Set a reminder to take a look at your process documentation and update them as needed.

Sometimes, “building the plane while you fly it” is unavoidable. You just have to take off, move fast, and figure it out on the way.

But here’s the real question: Are you building the plane with duct tape or rivets?

Too often, “building the plane as we fly it” becomes an excuse to cut corners. “Just get it done. We’ll fix it later.” But later rarely comes and temporary becomes permanent. And you’re left flying a patched-together machine at 30,000 feet.

Yes, getting thrown in the deep end can be a great way to grow. But what if you used the chaos to take a beat and build something that lasts?

Even in the rush, you usually have a choice.

I was listening to an interview with Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, who recently said that in the age of AI, we’ll start valuing different types of people – not just those with the right answers, but those who know how to ask the right questions.

That’s always been true in leadership. The best operators, managers, and strategic thinkers don’t start with great strategic plans. They start by asking good, important questions.

What are we trying to solve here?
What would make this simpler, faster, more scalable, or more valuable?
What does success here look like?
If this fails, why will that have happened?

Like Altman, I am a techno-optimist. While the development side of AI is still very closed off and expensive, access to the fruits of that development – the knowledge – is super affordable and accessible.

The people who can ask the right questions – whether to their AI or to their teammates – are those who I believe will truly excel in the coming decades.

Bonus: Some good questions that managers should ask themselves every week.