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I'm having trouble following the example. If running away from the fear is delegating an employee to find more office space due to the fire marshal's requiremen

I'm having trouble following the example. If running away from the fear is delegating an employee to find more office space due to the fire marshal's requirement, what is running toward the fear? Saying no to the fire marshal? It's probably finding the office space themselves, and presumably for cheaper. But this is kind of left for the reader to conclude, so I'm not sure what the message is here.

munchbunny 7y ago
I had the same question. In that case, the root of the issue was that the crash broke the key assumption that the CEO was operating on: that the company's growth in revenue and headcount would continue at current rates. Delegating the to someone else to quickly find a new office doesn't fix the problem that history broke the CEO's own preconditions. I think the CEO's overall point is still valid, but in a different way. If you are a leader with substantive responsibilities, you'll get tons of "bad feelings", and some subset of them will turn out to be real problems. One sign of a good leader is how accurate they are at predicting which ones are real problems. This is one place where experience matters a lot, because experience (applied well) helps a lot to translate the bad gut feeling into targeted investigation.
borvo 7y ago
He wrote "so I delegated the decision. I ran from the fear". He delegated the decision, not just the task of finding options for the space.
swsieber 7y ago
He chose not to think about the decision by just rolling with it. Alternatives, off the top of my head: * Fire people? * Do a cost-benefit analysis - could they sustain a new space? Or would they have to move everyone to somewhere cheaper? * Would shifting some people to work remotely work? Delegating getting more office space was running away from fear because it was the option that required the least thinking about his fear.
- beat 7y ago
  Loudcloud was at the peak of the dot-com boom, late '90s to early '00s. Working remotely wasn't really an option then.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
> what is running toward the fear? Stopping and thinking critically about the situation, questioning assumptions, analyzing KPIs, analyzing risk levels... (or delegating the above to a capable team member with the understanding that you want the truth), asking thoughtful, open-ended questions of subordinates --- essentially, opening your mind up and allowing yourself to carefully consider all potential outcomes, even the nasty ones that you would rather remain blissfully ignorant of. As a leader, you want to believe everything is going along just fine. Sometimes when it's not, you sense that as a fear-in-the-gut, and the temptation is to ignore it. The message here is - don't.

munchbunny 7y ago

I had the same question. In that case, the root of the issue was that the crash broke the key assumption that the CEO was operating on: that the company's growth in revenue and headcount would continue at current rates. Delegating the to someone else to quickly find a new office doesn't fix the problem that history broke the CEO's own preconditions. I think the CEO's overall point is still valid, but in a different way. If you are a leader with substantive responsibilities, you'll get tons of "bad feelings", and some subset of them will turn out to be real problems. One sign of a good leader is how accurate they are at predicting which ones are real problems. This is one place where experience matters a lot, because experience (applied well) helps a lot to translate the bad gut feeling into targeted investigation.

borvo 7y ago

He wrote "so I delegated the decision. I ran from the fear". He delegated the decision, not just the task of finding options for the space.

swsieber 7y ago

He chose not to think about the decision by just rolling with it. Alternatives, off the top of my head: * Fire people? * Do a cost-benefit analysis - could they sustain a new space? Or would they have to move everyone to somewhere cheaper? * Would shifting some people to work remotely work? Delegating getting more office space was running away from fear because it was the option that required the least thinking about his fear.

beat 7y ago
Loudcloud was at the peak of the dot-com boom, late '90s to early '00s. Working remotely wasn't really an option then.

TimTheTinker 7y ago

> what is running toward the fear? Stopping and thinking critically about the situation, questioning assumptions, analyzing KPIs, analyzing risk levels... (or delegating the above to a capable team member with the understanding that you want the truth), asking thoughtful, open-ended questions of subordinates --- essentially, opening your mind up and allowing yourself to carefully consider all potential outcomes, even the nasty ones that you would rather remain blissfully ignorant of. As a leader, you want to believe everything is going along just fine. Sometimes when it's not, you sense that as a fear-in-the-gut, and the temptation is to ignore it. The message here is - don't.