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If your team cant function without you in the room, you dont have a team, you have a dependency. Too many business owners confuse supporting their team with carrying them. Instead of learning how to coach team members, they do the work for them. They jump into every problem, solve every issue, and answer every question themselves. It feels like good leadership, but its actually just bottlenecking in disguise. The goal of leadership isnt to be the smartest person in the room. Instead, its to build a room full of people who can think, solve, and act without you. That shift, from problem-solver to coach, is one of the most important moves a business owner can make. Its also the only way to scale without burning out. Heres how to make it. 1. Stop answering every question When a team member asks you, What should I do about X? dont give them the answer right away. Instead, ask: What options have you considered? What would you do if I werent here? Whats the next step you could take? This isnt about being evasive. Its about developing their decision-making muscles. Every time you solve it for them, you train them to keep coming back. When you coach them through it, you grow their confidence and capability. 2. Trade firefighting for frameworks Good managers put out fires. Great leaders build fire prevention systems. Start capturing how you think through challenges: What is your decision-making process? What questions do you ask before committing to a course of action? What patterns do you see in recurring issues? Turn those into frameworks your team can use. That could be a decision tree, a checklist, or a step-by-step doc. If its in your head, its a habit. If its on paper, its a tool. 3. Coach on outcomes, not style Many owners get stuck correcting how something is done instead of focusing on the result. If a team member gets to 90% of the desired outcome in their own way, then celebrate that. Tweak where needed but resist the urge to micromanage their method. Too much intervening or micromanaging can stifle creativity and growth. Your goal isnt to build clones. Its to build capability. Let people solve problems in their own voice as long as the standards are met. 4. Create a feedback loop. Then, step back Coaching doesnt mean disappearing. It means setting up support and structure: Weekly check-ins focused on progress, not perfection. Clear KPIs tied to outcomes, not hours. Open channels for questions but with the expectation that they will bring solutions too. When you step back with structure, your team steps up with ownership. 5. Let go of the hero identity It feels good to be the fixer, the rescuer, or the one who always has the answers. However, if your business depends on you always being the hero, youll never escape the hamster wheel. And your team will never reach their full potential. Great coaches dont chase trophies. They build champions. Be the multiplier, not the machine Your job isnt to do more. Its to make everyone around you better. Coaching is the leverage point where leadership stops being reactive and starts becoming exponential. Its the difference between growth that drains you and growth that sustains you. So the next time you feel the urge to fix something for your team, pause and ask: Is this a task to completeor a chance to coach? One builds a to-do list. The other builds a business. David Finkel This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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Earlier this week, communities around the world observed World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. It’s a day to honor those we’ve lost and recommit ourselves to preventing future tragedies. As someone who’s worked in the transportation industry for more than 25 years, I come at this topic as an insider. You may have heard the term Vision Zero in local political campaigns or public safety PSAs. Vision Zero is a strategy to eliminate all severe crashes. It’s not just a marketing campaign, it’s an approach to road safety that begins with this basic understanding: Severe motor vehicle crashes are preventable. The status quo believes the fantasy that traffic violence is inevitable. That there’s nothing we can do. The truth is, we can prevent severe crashes. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}} Every day, another 100 families are grieving the loss of a loved one. Every day, thousands of families are dealing with medical bills, physical therapy, loss of work, loss of mobility. Vision Zero is the strategy to end this pain and suffering. It’s a wildly different approach from the status quo in two major ways: First, people make mistakes. A transportation system needs to be designed so that when people do make mistakes, it doesn’t result in a death or serious injury. Second, safety is multidisciplinary. People are influenced by more than just street design. In Richmond, Virginia, 1 in 12 residents is dealing with a combination of substance abuse and mental health disorders. And then they get behind the wheel of a car. In other words, Vision Zero is a practical strategy to save lives that’s based on understanding human nature. So if we know how to fix this crisis, why isn’t culture changing? It’s because the average person needs to hear the personal stories about the victims of traffic violence. The power of emotion Any historian or psychologist will tell you that facts alone don’t move humans to action. Emotion moves us. It’s hard to admit, because on some level we all want to think of ourselves as rational and logical creatures. But it’s when we get emotionally attached to something that we take action. That might sound overwhelming, but let me give you an example of how culture changed just in my lifetime, and not at all based on logic. In a 10-year period, about 13 Americans died from peanut allergies. Each one of those cases was tragic. But in that same 10-year period, more than 400,000 Americans were killed in traffic crashes. And that’s not even counting the millions injured. Compare 13 deaths from a chemical reaction in the body versus 400,000 deaths from preventable crashes. An entire generation of kids was led to believe that peanuts might send one of their classmates to the hospital. The peanut became a bogeyman in neighborhoods across the country. Now you can’t get a bag of peanuts near a school, or a soccer game, or a birthday party, or even on some airplanes. In a very short period of time, America mobilized for a Peanut Vision Zero. Change is possible Im telling you this not to mock people who have to be careful around nuts, but to tell you our culture is capable of radical change in a short period of time. So when it comes to road safety: We have the data explaining whats causing tragedies. We have the engineering and enforcement solutions to prevent tragedies. We can change culture. We can stop the tragedies. Whatever your background, your economic status, your education level, your job statusyou’re a human being who interacts with other human beings. Get people emotionally connected to the impacts of traffic violence. There are many ways you might choose to do that. Maybe its playing a short video at a PTA meeting of a heartbroken parent talking about their child who was lost in a preventable crash. Maybe its inviting a survivor whos dealing with life-altering injuries to speak at a local forum. No severe crash is acceptable. If you truly believe that, youll drive carefully and youll be the person in your friend group whos always pressing on others to drive carefully. We’ve seen culture change in small and large ways. We can do this together. We can reduce life-altering crashes down to zero. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}}
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As startups race to keep up with advances in artificial intelligence, some of them seem to be borrowing from Chinas exacting work culturewhich normalized a 72-hour workweek, or a 996 schedule of working six days a week from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. While the 996 parlance and laser focus on AI may be new, hustle culture has always been embedded in Silicon Valley to some degree. Some business leaders, perhaps most famously Elon Musk, have long demanded those hours from their employees: There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week, he once said of the hardcore work ethic promoted at his companies. Now that culture seems to be seeping into more and more workplaces, as young founders and tech workers try to capitalize on the rise of AI. The CEO of the $10 billion AI startup Cognition has talked openly about the intense work ethic expected at his company. “Cognition has an extreme performance culture, and were up front about this in hiring so there are no surprises later,” he shared on X earlier this year. “We routinely are at the office through the weekend and do some of our best work late into the night. Many of us literally live where we work.” In this environment, Karri Saarinenan early employee at Coinbase and the former principal designer at Airbnbhas sought to do things differently. Saarinen founded Linear, an AI-powered enterprise software company, in 2019. It was well before the pandemic, but Saarinen believed it was important to lean into remote worknot just because Linear was creating tools for companies to use remotely for project management and product development, but also because the founders did not want to get stuck in Silicon Valley for the foreseeable future. We honestly asked ourselves: Do we want to do a company here for the next 10 or 20 years? And we decided no, Saarinen says. Linear has raised $82 million this yearspiking its valuation to more than a billion dollars. It boasts high-profile clients like OpenAI and Perplexity. And its done so without blindly embracing the hustle culture spouted by people like Musk. Avoiding an unsustainable pace In spite of this success, Saarinen says he has tried to be deliberate in his approach to building Linear, rather than cave to the pressure so many companies seem to feel amid the rapid clip of AI innovation. (It likely also helps that Linear has been profitable for four years, per Saarinen.) The tone of corporate messaging on AI, both from tech giants and smaller startups, has been that the technology is moving fastand their employees need to step up to meet the moment. In a memo earlier this year, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy noted that the company was already using generative AI in nearly every part of the business, but that Amazon was still at the relative beginning and should move faster. Were going to keep pushing to operate like the worlds largest startupcustomer-obsessed, inventive, fast-moving, lean, scrappy, and full of missionaries trying to build something better for customers and a business that outlasts us all, he wrote. (Jassy also explicitly said AI adoption would necessitate job cuts, though he has denied the recent layoffs at Amazon were due to AI.) Other Big Tech companies have also tied AI strategy to breakneck speed and a potentially draining work culture. At Meta, senior leaders have called for employees to go 5x faster by using AI. Our goal is simple yet audacious: Make Al a habit, not a novelty, Metaverse VP Vishal Shah wrote in an internal message, per a 404 Media report. This means prioritizing training and adoption for everyone, so that using Al becomes second naturejust like any other tool we rely on. Shah added, We expect 80% of Metaverse employees to have integrated AI into their daily work routines by the end of this year. Meta has also invested billions of dollars in hiringand poachingtop AI talent. Saarinen understands why company leaders feel like they need to move fast, but he argues the pace is likely not sustainable, noting that the current AI race is not going to end after this year. It will probably go for the next decade. So are you going to race that whole next decade? As a founder, Saarinen says there can be an impulse to emulate other successful companies or keep up with peers, regardless of what might be best for your own company. I think a lot of this pressure is somewhat self-created, he says. I don’t know if it’s even real. Companies are so focused on what all the other companies are doing, so they’re trying to build the same things or catch up to everyone. Taking time for test runs Linear has intentionally taken a slower approach to growing its ranks, in stark contrast to the companies offering huge sums of money to out-hire their competitors. The company has more or less doubled its headcount each year and now employs about 80 people. At Coinbase, I was [maybe] the 12th person there, Saarinen says. And then in a year, there were like 60 people. Now most of the people around you are new and have been there a very short time. I think it can be useful, and it’s exciting [when] a company is growing fast. But there are a lot of situations where it gets quite chaotic, and the culture kind of suffers. A core part of its hiring process is what the company calls a work trial. Once a candidate gets to the final stage of the interview process at Linear, they are invited to participate in a paid trial periodtypically two to five dayswhen they are tasked with working on a real project alongside employees at the company. Its a feature that adds friction to the hiring process but helps the company understand whether someone will be a good fit. Sometimes its a differentiator that pushes a candidate to accept a job at Linear over other offers; in other instances, it has weeded out people who did not want to commit to a work trial. The aim is trying to simulate the real working relationship as much as possible, Saarinen says. We can obviously see how the person gets things done, but also: What is their thinking style? What’s their communiation style? For the candidate, I think it’s also a good way to know if they want to work in this company. It can also help determine, for example, whether engineers are looking for a job where they are told what to do, or if they are interested in taking more ownership of their work, as is the norm at Linear. People should have some life outside of work The work trial and other atypical elements of Linears culture have helped attract people who are not interested in the endless grind of working at some of the hottest AI companies. Linear has had very little attrition, according to Saarinen, and the company usually tries to promote from within. Saarinen also firmly believes that the quality of work is compromised when you work people to the bone. That quality piece that we value the mostwe think that doesn’t happen if you just keep pushing people harder and harder, he says. People should have some life outside of work. They should get inspired by their life, and then hopefully that will kind of bleed into the work as well. If you just feel better, then I think the work you do is a little better. He hopes that Linear might offer a counterexample to tech workers who are building companies in the AI space at this particular juncture. I want to show other founders that you can also do things differently, he says. You don’t always have to do what everyone else is doing. I think that’s kind of what is happening in the market, that everyone is hearing this story: Those guys work really hard, so I must do it as well. And maybe it makes sense for youor maybe it doesn’t.
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