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Whenever I think about this dilemma, I come to the conclusion that Woz, great as he is, just couldn't do the culture and product vision side of things. No doubt

Whenever I think about this dilemma, I come to the conclusion that Woz, great as he is, just couldn't do the culture and product vision side of things. No doubt, he's a genius, but he's also a little quirky. I don't know if he could herd people as effectively as Jobs could. I had the opportunity to very briefly meet him at a blockchain conference (of all things) in LA in 2016, and he didn't strike me as a guy who wants to take on all the clutter and bullshit of managing people. People are much messier than clean, well-engineered technology.

neilv 6y ago
A lot of our talk about leadership is about MBA-style, influencing by charisma, large ego, maybe wanting to be in power, etc. What about leading by fundamentally admirable example? Would the people who decide to follow/join end up influenced more by merit relative to those values, than by high school popularity contest? For pragmatics of this hypothetical, what if the imaginary Woz-leader had, e.g., a Chief of Staff, who was aligned with Woz being leader, and who made sure the necessary things Woz didn't want to do or wasn't good at, still happened?
- sebmellen 6y ago
  Maybe that Chief of Staff model would work. I don't know. But just a little feedback — real leaders are not high school popularity contest winners. They are just very effective at managing human and other capital. Think of someone like Jeff Bezos. I think the biggest issue with a tech person being in leadership is that it takes a lot of time to develop the real soft skills required for leadership. That doesn't mean becoming your caricature of an MBA-style leader. It means actually understanding how to talk to people and get them to perform and do what you need them to. You don't get that by being a large ego-ed braggart. Then, it of course takes a lot of time to develop technical skills. If you want to be both, you will have a much harder time reaching the apex of both skill levels, hence why tech/business co-founding teams are very common. That's not to say one person can't be good at both both — many are — but these people are much rarer and are unicorns of their own. Often, you have to have some natural talent for one of these skillsets, and then work hard to compensate for your lack of competency in the other domain.

neilv 6y ago

A lot of our talk about leadership is about MBA-style, influencing by charisma, large ego, maybe wanting to be in power, etc. What about leading by fundamentally admirable example? Would the people who decide to follow/join end up influenced more by merit relative to those values, than by high school popularity contest? For pragmatics of this hypothetical, what if the imaginary Woz-leader had, e.g., a Chief of Staff, who was aligned with Woz being leader, and who made sure the necessary things Woz didn't want to do or wasn't good at, still happened?

sebmellen 6y ago
Maybe that Chief of Staff model would work. I don't know. But just a little feedback — real leaders are not high school popularity contest winners. They are just very effective at managing human and other capital. Think of someone like Jeff Bezos. I think the biggest issue with a tech person being in leadership is that it takes a lot of time to develop the real soft skills required for leadership. That doesn't mean becoming your caricature of an MBA-style leader. It means actually understanding how to talk to people and get them to perform and do what you need them to. You don't get that by being a large ego-ed braggart. Then, it of course takes a lot of time to develop technical skills. If you want to be both, you will have a much harder time reaching the apex of both skill levels, hence why tech/business co-founding teams are very common. That's not to say one person can't be good at both both — many are — but these people are much rarer and are unicorns of their own. Often, you have to have some natural talent for one of these skillsets, and then work hard to compensate for your lack of competency in the other domain.