Own your lane

Ever look up a recipe and find a short novel before the recipe itself?

Or maybe you received an email from someone, and after three paragraphs, you still don’t know what they want.

Maybe it’s a report or memo that buries the top line info in fluff and filler.

One of the best ways to get a response, earn respect, and win is by getting to the point.

It doesn’t mean being cold – you’re still a human communicating with another human, so respect is a must. It means being concise and clear.

Say what you mean and say it early.

If you dive into books or articles on building great organizations, you’ll find no shortage of frameworks, models, or operating systems. I’ve studied and used pieces of nearly all of them for about a decade now. But none quite fit the kind of organizations I’ve worked in: organizations created to solve big problems and create lasting impact.

After a decade of leading organizations, I’ve come to learn that every healthy and effective organization is built upon four foundations – Impact, Talent, Operations, and Ownership. And when these foundations are built well, they allow every corner of the organization to fire on all cylinders.

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.

Not everyone should be a manager. More people need to say that out loud.

We think moving up means moving into management. Organizational leaders assume the only way to promote someone is to give them people to manage. Early career professionals assume it is the only path to advancement and higher pay.

One of the worst, most draining mistakes you can make is stepping into management when you are meant to be a strong individual contributor.

Management means putting down your craft to lead people and develop the next generation. Being an individual contributor means building deep expertise. Both paths are valuable. Both are needed. You have to know which one fits you.

Management brings its own stress: hard decisions, hard conversations, and responsibilities you can’t just check off. But the reward of helping others grow is real.

Some people thrive as specialized individual contributors. They become highly valued and well paid, without managing a team.

Success comes in many forms. Pick the one that fits you.

There’s probably something big you’re avoiding right now.

I’ve been there too: Staying in a job I no longer liked because starting a new one felt like a pain in the ass. Keeping a toxic employee around because I didn’t want to have the awkward 20-minute conversation to let them go. Waiting until the last minute to start a big project because I didn’t know how to get started.

In Traction, Gino Wickman calls this the “36 hours of pain.” He tells the story of a manager who knew one of his longtime employees was no longer the right fit for the role as the company grew. The thought of letting them go was agonizing. But after the 36 hours leading up to the termination, once he finally did it, the work environment changed overnight. His team even thanked him for making the tough decision.

We trade long-term peace for short-term comfort all the time. Over time, these constant tradeoffs deteriorate our motivation, mental state, confidence, and even our physical health.

A tough moment today – a decision, a conversation, a confrontation with reality – can save you from months or years of frustration.

Greetings from day one of my week of PTO. Seemed like a fitting time to talk about one of my favorite benefits: unlimited time off.

A lot of people say unlimited PTO is a scam. And in many companies, it is. But that’s not a failure of the policy; it’s a failure of leadership.

I stand behind unlimited PTO 100%. We use it at my organization, and we make an effort to ensure it gets used. And that’s the key: leaders have to take responsibility for making it work.

You have to build a culture that respects time off. Make it clear people aren’t to be bothered when they’re out. Do a regular inventory of who hasn’t taken time and ask why. Then fix those barriers.

Most of the time, what stops someone from taking PTO isn’t laziness or neglect; it’s guilt. They don’t want to burden their team. Or maybe they’re in the middle of a big project. Or they treat PTO like a golf score, where the lower the number, the more impressive it looks.

Those are all management issues. If someone feels like they can’t step away, that’s often on leadership. Do you have a contingency plan so people can unplug? Are your timelines so inflexible that a few days off will derail everything? What message are you sending – directly or indirectly – about time off?

Your team is too valuable to screw up with a poorly executed unlimited PTO program. Build the systems to make it work.