Companies mistakenly bundle management with authority, forcing top performers onto a management track to gain influence. Separate them. Define management's role as coordination and context-sharing, allowing senior individual contributors to drive decisions without managing people.

In a highly collaborative and fast-paced environment, assign explicit ownership for every feature, no matter how small. The goal isn't to assign blame for failures but to empower individuals with the agency to make decisions, build consensus, and see their work through to completion.

Due to demographic shifts and a post-pandemic re-evaluation of work, employees now hold more power. This requires a fundamental leadership mindset shift: from managing people and processes to enabling their success. High turnover and disengagement are no longer employee problems but leadership failures. A leader's success now depends entirely on the success of their team, meaning 'you work for them'.

To accelerate your career, focus on developing 'agency'. This means moving beyond assigned tasks to proactively solve unspoken, systemic problems. Instead of chasing high-visibility projects, look for the unaddressed issues that keep leaders up at night. Solving these demonstrates true ownership and strategic value.

The most promising hires are often high-agency individuals constrained by their current environment—'caged animals' who need to be unleashed. Look for candidates who could achieve significantly more if not for their team or organization's limitations. This is a powerful signal of untapped potential and resourcefulness.

The belief that people fail due to lack of will leads to blame. Shifting to 'people do well if they can' reframes failure as a skill gap, not a will gap. This moves your role from enforcer to helper, focusing you on identifying and building missing skills.

WCM avoids the 'family' metaphor, which implies unconditional belonging and can make performance conversations difficult. They prefer framing the team as 'a group of friends,' which emphasizes voluntary commitment and a mutual desire not to let each other down, fostering greater accountability.

Our culture equates accountability with punishment. A more powerful form of accountability is making someone a co-owner in solving the root problem. This ensures the issue doesn't recur and is the ultimate form of taking responsibility for one's actions.