Category: Articles (Page 1 of 15)

Across reading, observation, and experience, one pattern becomes difficult to avoid: whenever people coordinate in groups, some form of power is present. Not as an exception, but as a structural necessity. Without it, coordination does not scale; decisions stall, and direction fragments. A state of nature, you might say.

There is a great deal of research on leadership effectiveness and leadership styles in the workplace. Some of these studies are contradictory or inconclusive. At best, many rely on constructs that are difficult to measure cleanly. Nevertheless, we still show up at work every day, leading in various ways and at different levels, trying to move our organisations forward and achieve common goals.

Many years ago, I read Derek Sivers’ post titled “Don’t Be a Donkey.” The premise of the post was that if we think long term, we realise that we can do many of the things we want to do in a lifetime, just not all at once.

Derek argued that “If you’re thirty now and have six different directions you want to pursue, then you can do each one for ten years, and have done all of them by the time you’re ninety.”

In an article published on my blog, “3 Frameworks to Figure Out What to Do with Your Career,” I wrote that most of us wrestle with two broad categories of questions in our careers — what to do and where to do it. I concluded that what to do is the more demanding of the two.

When I started my career at PwC, one of the core messages I took away from the orientation month was that “your career is in your hands.” I also understood that consultancies are highly competitive environments where you can do incredible work with intelligent people and, more importantly, where grit, energy and creativity are well rewarded.

Over the years in my career, I’ve watched people sacrifice things I wouldn’t. I’ve also sacrificed things that, to others, made little sense to give up. I’m at peace with those choices — more than that, they are the source of the deepest satisfaction I take from my career.

Marcus Aurelius, often described as the last good emperor of Rome, wrote a striking reflection on human work:

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?

So you were born to feel ‘nice’? Instead of doing things and experiencing them?

Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can?

And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands? You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.”