A simple, written leadership operating system-just 10 bullet points-gives clarity, improves delegation, scaling, hiring, and change execution, cutting the waste of ad-hoc decision-making.
Leaders often wing decisions and rely on muscle memory, which leads to misaligned teams, slow onboarding, and stalled change initiatives. The author argues that the missing piece is a personal operating system for leadership-a concise, written set of principles that defines the kind of leader you want to be and the organization you aim to run. By formalizing these ideas, you gain clarity that ripples through delegation, scaling, hiring, and change management.
When there is no OS, knowledge spreads via oral history and hand gestures, resulting in each manager interpreting guidance differently. This creates cultural drift, entropy in delegation, and endless cycles of re-alignment. Change initiatives die because there is no clear framework to track ownership, metrics, or escalation paths. The article points out that the cost of this ad-hoc approach is wasted time and repeated communication.
The solution is a Minimum Viable OS: carve out a week, hold a personal offsite with just a notepad, set a 15-minute timer, and write down bullet points on the most pressing leadership subjects. After the timer, rewrite them for clarity-using an LLM is acceptable-and publish them in a shared Notion folder titled "OS". Suggested topics include team rituals, risk management, change ownership, delegation guides, decision-making frameworks, communication norms, and hiring/onboarding philosophy. This lightweight exercise delivers immediate, practical impact without the overhead of a formal manifesto.
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