Dear Ms. Brann
It has been nearly six months since I settled into a new nest called Formula Labs. I did not come in as a leader. It began as a joint collaboration alongside Ludium — I joined as one member of a company that had its own CEO, a friend of mine. Then, as these things go, the friend stepped away, and I found myself a leader again. It has been barely three months since I began carrying this team.
Counting backward, the numbers surprise me. Nine years since Nonce, where all of this started. Seven since I first stood at the head of something. Five with Ludium. That is a great many organizations and a great many teammates. In some partings I was the one who said goodbye; in others, goodbye was said to me. Having held the title for so long, I suspect I have been the one to ask for the parting more often than not. Looking around at the startups and founders near me, teams that begin together and end together do exist — but only barely. Still, every parting leaves behind the same small residue: could I not have done something more?
The most recent partings, if I am honest, happened mostly because the business itself did not turn. A business, at bottom, is a virtuous cycle: people pool their time, the pooled time creates value for someone, and the value comes back as reward to be shared. Where no value reaches a customer, there is no revenue, and nothing about the arrangement can last. Moving into marketing has changed that much. The revenue is not large, and the footing is still precarious, but it clears the minimum bar of sustainability. And that changes the question. It is no longer whether we survive — it is whether each of us can hold our own ground fully and still lock together into something that grows.
The other cause was me — my style of managing, and the inevitable rawness of a first-time founder. I believe every successful organization is measured by the same yardstick: each individual exercising their capability to the fullest in a clear role, and cooperation carrying those individuals toward a common goal. Every organization needs that same result. But the road there could not vary more. One company moves with drilled precision under an exacting, almost monarchical leader; another explodes with energy under a warm and inclusive one, rank hardly mattering at all. And yet — even under the most imperial leadership, individual capability only appears where people participate and think of their own accord; and even in the warmest room, results only arrive where a system of management holds. Neither temperament is exempt from the other’s requirement.
Many remember Steve Jobs as the imperial kind. But he never counted people who needed controlling among his best. In an interview from 1985, barely thirty years old, he says it plainly:
“The greatest people are self-managing — they don’t need to be managed. Once they know what to do, they’ll go figure out how to do it. They don’t need to be managed at all. What they need is a common vision. And that’s what leadership is: having a vision, being able to articulate that so the people around you can understand it, and getting a consensus on a common vision.”
Steve Jobs talks about managing people (1985)
That was how he worked, too. When someone at the table was better than him, the right move was to listen and follow their direction; and ideas were to be argued fiercely, collision included, until the best one won. An organization’s performance is, in the end, the sum of its individuals — and for every member to reach their maximum, the place must ultimately run on autonomy. Not autonomy as absence of demand, but autonomy as the condition under which capable people do their best work.
My problem sits on the road to that place: I am not good at pulling a person’s capability out to its limit. The head’s job is to keep watching what is actually happening inside the organization — what is lacking, what the problem is, what the answer is, and whether the answer is truly being driven through to a result. Sometimes that means deliberately creating uncomfortable moments. My failure was not exactly that I hated the discomfort. It was a complacency — it will sort itself out someday — living comfortably alongside a plain unwillingness to bother. Sloth, to give it its proper name; you will recognize it from my last letter. Before I became the leader again, I watched my friend — the departing CEO, an investor by background — at work: relentlessly diligent, examining everything one detail at a time. I learned a great deal just from watching. I am still short of it, but I am building the habit of looking more closely than I used to.
What I feel more keenly than ever is that the world is changed by details. And that keeps returning me to the question of my own role. Mine is to set direction and open new ground — concretely, to grow the channels where revenue happens — and I turn that over every single day. At the same time, facing inward, I am stacking up a daily habit of taking apart what is actually happening in the team, piece by piece. I should admit that Claude carries the largest share of that labor. But the resolve underneath is simple enough. The team must never come apart because of my lack. At the very least, let me pull my own weight — and I pray for the diligence to keep doing it, one ordinary day at a time.
Agwn