The Art of Leadership

Chapter 2. Meeting Blur

Wednesday afternoon. 3:30 p.m. Tanya and I are walking through a complex political scenario involving product and engineering. Nothing devious. Just complex. Many moving parts. I’ve had some version of this conversation five times today.

The whiteboard is my savior. I’m using it to draw a picture that anchors the core points of the situation. Those core points change from conversation to conversation, and I update the picture to capture this emerging reality.

The problem is, the picture captures my reality, and not the reality of the people with whom I’m conversing. When it comes to complex political scenarios, you need to keep track of who knows what. Again, nothing nefarious. No ill intent. Just an honest attempt to shape the narrative productively.

Tanya says something important. Really important. It’s high on the Richter scale of thought, and I need to update my entire thinking in a moment. Problem is, I’ve had this conversation five times today, and suddenly I cannot remember what was said by whom, when, and where.

Welcome to Meeting Blur.

Too Much

As a leader, you have disproportionate access to developments in your team and company. Nothing surprising here. You are the representative of your team, so you get invited to a lot of meetings for representatives. These meetings contain synthesized information about what is going down in the company right now.¹

Because of your access to all this information and your disposition as a person who gets things ...