The following are meditations on corporate leadership. No scientific claims, just my opinion.

More than 60,000 leadership books have been published, with a word count rivaling the fabled Library of Alexandria, which sought to house all texts of the ancient world. It would, however, be absurd to construct a granite shrine to the notoriously banal genre of leadership. Perhaps no other domain publishes so many overlapping maxims, such as ‘Lead by Example’, ‘Communicate a Clear Vision’, or ‘Adapt Relentlessly’. It begs the question - why does this field feel so redundant?

I’ll answer this by listing leadership traits I value, and from there seeing if and why redundancy forms. To compile these I must first define success. When asked to name great leaders, people often cite political figures, business tycoons, academics id est those who spearheaded the attainment of a monumental goal. Achievement matters, but when someone is asked who a great leader was to them personally, answers tend to shift toward their own benefit. So I’ll consider both achievement and employee impact.

Swords Over Scepters

Society-shaping companies like Apple, Google, Toyota etc. share a common trait, which is their foundry’s product mastery. They knew core offerings intimately and served as the original architects. Despite this model’s success, many organizations grant leaders little time for what the Japanese call Genba-Shugi - staying connected to the ground floor. This proximity is valuable, as product savvy managers draw like-minded talent into the tier below, a dynamic which can cascade throughout an organization’s ranks. This terraced transmission of mastery—reminiscent of medieval craft guilds—is one of the oldest surviving managerial structures, and patiently awaits firms who stray from their core.

Service

In my search for qualities, I pondered what determines rank in families, a structure much older than craft guilds. Wealth and sociability were the initial suspects, but upon observing family heads in my orbit, the standout trait was disproportionate sacrifice. Like matriarchs in African elephant herds, they gained status through service, often dedicating decades of unrequited generosity. Familial-grade sacrifice isn’t and shouldn’t be a corporate expectation, but the general principle transfers to the workplace cleanly. Even modest acts of service, like resolving bureaucracy blocking an employee’s project, can generate goodwill and elevate a manager’s standing.

The Lotus Pond

The final trait is universally revered, with numerous cultures having several words for it. The African Yoruba call it Itutu, which means coolness under pressure. The French say Aplomb, a word derived from a vertical balancing tool that evokes steadiness under strain. The equanimity these languages refer to is of particular importance at work. Professional lives often demand more composure under pressure than personal ones. It’s not easy to be as tranquil in an office as one would be while gazing over flowers on a still pond. Yet it is in this calm that some of our best decisions are made.

Old Knowledge

The themes described here are simple and common, with analogues in the animal kingdom. I previously mentioned elephants engaging in acts of service. They exhibit the other mentioned traits as well, like acquiring specialized knowledge, educating youth, exploring new territory, and maintaining temperament under stress. The emergence of these behaviors across biological groups suggests that they’re both old and common.

Most leadership literature is a similarly structured list of common behaviors. The usefulness of a list to a reader could depend on how well the author’s circumstances matches their own, but it’s not always easy to tell a good match. A natural guess many make is to select a textbook in your field e.g. data science. Teams however vary significantly within departments, much less entire vocational domains. It can be difficult to select a list closely matching your situation.

Even if an optimal list of situational pointers existed, I’m not sure they would stick with readers. Most managerial knowledge is accumulated slowly through repeated trials, which gradually molds intuition. It’s easier to register how important things are if we can see how often they happen, or emotionally experience outcomes. So even if literature can define perfect form, enduring an odyssey seems like the best way to acquire it.

This was more of a philosophy piece than our focus, which is making scientific content more palatable for mainstream audiences. But we believe that letting you know how we think is just as important as what we build.

The Gift

Sometimes we serve others by educating them. This is not a simple task, as teaching often demands domain mastery, storytelling, pithiness, analogical fluency, humor, and empathy. Fusing these into coherent transmissions is wizardry, and ironically makes teaching one of the least teachable professions. To be good at it is a gift, one whose rarity is particularly pronounced in technical domains. It’s not rare to see YouTube lecturers explain statistics with markedly higher clarity than university professors. Nor is it rare to feel that such teachers are in short supply. As technical domains burrow deeper into specialist topics, these folks will continue to rise in value.

Innovation by Hourglass

Thus far I’ve focused on how leaders interact with others, but solitude is also sacred. One of its greatest fruits is innovation—where someone retreats to their sanctum, and like the mythic engineer Daedalus, crafts wings to rise above their confines. The best innovations (e.g. PageRank, LLMs) however take time, often years. This contrasts starkly with what most organizations allot for pioneering. A good manager must thus secure moments for their team to explore uncharted terrain. In time-constrained environments, obtaining these windows can matter just as much as creative ability – because the former enables the latter.