| Let me pose a theoretical. Let’s say you’re a VP or Senior Director. One of your sibling directors or VPs is over a department and field you have intimate domain knowledge. Meaning you have a successful track record in that field both from a management side and an IC side. Now, that sibling director allows a culture of sexual harassment, law breaking, and toxic throat slitting behavior. HR and the Organizations leadership is aware of this. However the company is profitable, outside his department happy, and stable. They don’t want to rock the boat. Is it still “the domain of the petty” to have a plan to replace them? To have formed relationships to work around them, and keep them in check? To have enacted policies outside their department to ensure the damage doesn’t spread? And most importantly to enact said replacement plan when they fuck up just enough leadership gives them the side-eye, and you push the issue with your documentation of their various grievances? Because that… is a coup. That is a coup that is atleast in my mind moral and just, leading to the betterment of the company. “Your best action is to walk away” - Good leadership doesn’t just walk away and let the company and employees fail. Not when there’s still the ability to effect positive change and fix the problems. Captains always evacuate all passengers before they leave the ship. Else they go down with it. |
Yes, exactly. In fact, it's corruption of leadership.
If an engineer came to the leader about a critical technical problem and said, 'our best choice is to pretend it's not there', the leader would demand more of the engineer. At a place like OpenAI, they might remind the engineer that they are the world's top engineers at arguably the most cutting edge software organization in the world, and they are expected to deliver solutions to the hardest problems. Throwing your hands up and ignoring the problem is just not acceptable.
Leaders need to demand the same of themselves, and one of their jobs is to solve the leadership problems that are just as difficult as those engineering problems - to deliver leadership results to the organization just like the engineer delivers engineering results, no excuses, no doubts. Many top-level leaders don't have anyone demanding performance of them, and don't hold themselves to the same standards in their job - leadership, management - as they hold their employees.
> Not when there’s still the ability to effect positive change and fix the problems.
Even there, I think you are going to easy on them. Only in hindsight do you maybe say, 'I don't see what could have been done.' At the moment, you say 'I don't see it yet, so I have to keep looking and innovating and finding a way'.