THE LEAFLET
September 25 2025
a toy model of management, managers and mentors are not the same, goals as hypotheses
A TOY MODEL OF MANAGEMENT
X + Y = Z is the rough equation
where
X = manager (effort) ;
Y = report (effort) ;
Z = result to be achieved
It’s much easier to run this equation and sort out what X and Y should represent when z is a constant or at least temporarily defined. Usually, you hold z constant by setting a goal.
There is something that looks and sounds obvious when you strip management down this far, yet it’s very easy for managers to forget when they’re managing people IRL. There’s a third thing besides you and the other person – the thing you’re trying to accomplish. The result you want to achieve.
That third thing is the reason both of you are in the equation. It’s what your work is for. It’s the priority.
-ben
Read the rest here.
MANAGERS AND MENTORS ARE NOT THE SAME
A manager is different than a mentor (or tutor or thought partner or research advisor) because a manager prioritizes the outcome even over the affect and satisfaction of the employees chasing that outcome. Sometimes employees need to be re-assigned or let go for the sake of the outcome.
Of course, very often, a recognized, satisfied employee will get to that outcome and get there faster than an employee who is ignored and disaffected. This is not a vote for treating people badly.
But new managers and managers of high-intellect or high-skill employees can rely too much on employee satisfaction as a proxy for good management. These managers can trap themselves and their reports in a frustrating cycle, unduly focusing on employee mood and avoiding “micro-management” at nearly all costs.
Maybe the very best feeling an employee has is making a big difference doing something that really matters. That “part of something bigger than oneself” satisfaction that comes from a shared pursuit, looking out through a big window instead of squinting at a small mirror.
Paradoxically, managers who prioritize outcomes might be likelier to spark that highest, best feeling in their employees.
-ben and eric
Read the rest here.
GOALS AS HYPOTHESES
I’ve written here before about setting forth the stakes of the work at hand, naming what’s at risk, to help your team find the intrigue and fun in that work.
One version of this that I rely upon is treating goals as hypotheses. We’re chasing this target because we have a hunch about the good results that will come from it. So we’re making a bet and seeing how it plays out. This isn’t bureaucratic compliance; it’s experimental learning.
Setting goals and talking about them this way makes the work of the team as a whole as a learning endeavor. It calls on your team’s curiosity. You’re doing things not “just” because you have to - you’re doing things to see what might happen next.
In addition to the motivational boost this can provide, I think it’s plainly better if the modal person on your team is wondering about new and better ways to do things, testing ideas, and then evaluating those ideas with the data they have. There’s ownership, zest, and intellect in that, each of which have positive spillover effects for the rest of the team and the mission you’re all chasing.
-eric
Read the rest here.
COMPELLING QUOTES
Writer Arundhati Roy on authenticity and argument:
There’s no such thing as an Authentic India or a Real Indian. There is no Divine Committee that has the right to sanction one single, authorized version of what India is or should be. There is no one religion or language or caste or region or person or story or book that can claim to be its sole representative. There are, and can only be, visions of India, various ways of seeing it—honest, dishonest, wonderful, absurd, modern, traditional, male, female. They can be argued over, criticized, praised, scorned, but not banned or broken. Not hunted down.
Author David Halberstam on curious definitions of integrity:
Why did McNamara have such good figures? Why did McNamara have such good staff work and Ball such poor staff work? The next day Ball would angrily dispatch his staff to come up with the figures, to find out how McNamara had gotten them, and the staff would burrow away and occasionally find that one of the reasons that Ball did not have comparable figures was that they did not always exist. McNamara had invented them, he dissembled even within the bureaucracy, though, of course, always for a good cause. It was part of his sense of service. He believed in what he did, and thus the morality of it was assured, and everything else fell into place. It was all right to lie and dissemble for the right causes. It was part of service, loyalty to the President, not to the nation, not to colleagues, it was a very special bureaucratic-corporate definition of integrity; you could do almost anything you wanted as long as it served your superior.
Texan screenwriter Larry McMurtry on our surroundings:
It's like I told you last night son. The earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight.
Keep going, keep growing,
Ben & Eric