#1: Soft Skills for Hard Tech - Leading with succession in mind

This is the 2nd in a series on Soft Skills for Hard Tech -16 communication and decision-making tools for leaders working on hard tech solutions for the energy transition.?The first post is here .

I've spent 25 years helping people build innovative organizations that do hard things. Along the way, I’ve been curating a collection of practical tools for leaders of fast-growing teams.

In this second post, I'll introduce the first framework in my leadership toolkit, Leading with Succession in Mind. Yep, even when it's just you.

1 starting point - succession

I keep coming back to succession as a starting point for how to organize thinking on leadership because it does two important things:?

1. It puts me in the right time frame, the longterm. I need as much help staying focused on the long term as I ca...hold up, phone's buzzing. brb?
2. It de-centers from the current leader to the community of leaders who'll care for the organization over time. Each will have a chapter to write. Each will seek to build on who came before, correct stuff they didn't get right, move forward towards the vision, the reason the org exists, our dent on the universe. I do better in community, and this framework helps me think about that emerging community - of stewards.

I should not be left to my own devices,

They come with prices and vices. - Taylor Swift

Tours of duty

If you’re a founder, this idea of working yourself out of job after job as you grow probably resonates; this framework clarifies and builds strong culture regardless of how close to leaving your current role you are.

When we think about defining each leader’s tour of duty as a chapter in an organization’s story of somehow making the world better, we better our odds.?Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh take this thinking to a much deeper level, breaking down three types of tours - rotational, transformational and foundational - but for now, let's stick with this basic idea: you're the leader for only one chapter in the organization's life. It's bigger than you and the current setting. (Shout out to Raphael Gang for bringing Hoffman's tour of duty idea to 4.0 .)?

Matt’s Succession Sprint?

Over the past year, I’ve been experimenting with what a leader might need to level up on this idea. If you want to get serious about this topic, here are the tools I grab from the rest of the kit to kickstart work on this topic:

• Org chart - Sketch the current version on your org, include 1-2 things about each teammate; upload for me to review. You can change names if you like; I’ll keep confidential.
• Storytime - Write one-three sentences for each chapter of the org to date, plus at least two versions of the next chapter.
• Board org chart - Read 3 duties of a board (tool #3) - Sketch the current board org chart on paper, include 1-2 things about each advisor; upload. You can change names if you like; I’ll keep confidential.
• 4 duties of a CEO pie chart (now vs ideal) - Draw a simple pie chart of how you spend your time right now based on the 4 duties of a CEO .
• Assess decision making depth - Using Vroom’s 5 types of decisions framework (tool #5), start tracking what regular decisions are being made by whom. Start evaluating the spread of autonomous, consultative, democratic and consensus decisions. What % of decisions are in each category? What should change if the team grew by 2, 3, 10X? ?

For me, this simple reminder, that I'm here in this role for only one chapter, frees me up to think more boldly, more creatively, not less. There are other CEOs with me on this journey, and it is up to me to explore all I can about where we could go, on what timeline, with whom along for the journey, until I get to that baton hand-off. It's not, in fact, all about me. At all.

You can download the complete toolkit or book a two-hour crash course on my five first-order tools here:?softskillsforhardtech.com