Intro
It’s Not Easy Being Lazy
Doing less is the core principle of “Lazy Leadership” -an essential but ironically, counterintuitive and challenging approach to building a successful business or even teams.
It is especially difficult for first-time founders, who are usually fueled by the adrenaline of being personally invested in every aspect of their company. Friction happens when the company starts to scale and grow at a velocity that outpaces them, regardless of the number of sleepless nights they put in.
The solution? “Lazy Leadership.”
The Perfect Combination of Intelligence and Laziness
In the early 1900’s, a German military general, Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, developed a matrix for categorizing his officers that encapsulated his philosophy on leadership:
Hammerstein-Equord Leadership Matrix
An interesting insight is that he felt officers who were a combination of clever and lazy, rather than clever and diligent, were better suited for the highest leadership duties. In his view, they possessed the “intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions.”
This is because in becoming a successful leader, it is critical to develop the mental maturity to have the:
- Have the humility to admit that you can’t do everything
- Tenacity to find the right leaders for the job, and step aside to empower them, and
- Discipline to follow through with the vision, structure, and culture that will set these teams up for success.
Developing this mental maturity means the leader would know when to move aside to empower others to get things done, and find the path of least resistance without sacrificing outcomes- hence outwardly appearing ‘lazy’. The absence of this will result in the leader defaulting to unconscious leadership.
The Pitfalls of Unconscious Leadership
Unconscious leadership happens when a leader, often with too much on their plate or too deeply embedded in the operations of the business, loses sight of the bigger picture. They no longer have clarity on their ultimate goals and are unable to monitor operational excellence.
Some typical symptoms of unconscious leadership include:
- Differing perspectives and opinions on what company success looks like among stakeholders resulting in lack of alignment in objectives,
- Projects conducted in silos with very little collaboration or coordination with the rest of the company with unclear outcomes,
- Lengthy leadership meetings, often digressing from the initial agenda, that often conclude with no clear resolution,
- An unmotivated workforce, often demoralized by excessive micromanagement.
How to be a Lazy Leader
So what does it take to be a ‘lazy’ leader? The hard part of being a ‘lazy’ leader is the need to be conscious—conscious of the structure your team needs to be in for it to be a high-performance team. Below are a few pointers to stay on the path of consciousness:
- Communicate Your Vision: The most aspirational vision is pointless if not made meaningful for everyone to work towards. Crystallize your ambition and cascade it into a roadmap with specific objectives and outcomes clarified and socialized across the company.
- Hire the Right People: The best leaders surround themselves with people smarter and more capable than themselves… and get out of their way! Acknowledge your weaknesses, be humble to recognize you cannot solve everything, and find the right talent to fill those gaps. Do not shy away from being creative about leveraging experience and expertise. Today’s versatile job landscape allows startups to leverage part-time or remote arrangements to find quality counsel on a smaller budget.
- Adopt Commander’s Intent: First introduced by General Patton in World War II, Commander’s Intent emphasizes delegation and improvisation to achieve a desired outcome. By setting a clear direction, establishing goals and expectations, and providing basic guidelines, employees are granted the autonomy to take ownership of execution.
- Monitor and Measure: Set up structures that help you keep a pulse on how everyone is progressing. Frameworks like Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) or programs like Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) are effective for early-stage startups trying to achieve audacious goals. They provide visibility across the leadership team on each department’s progress while allowing flexibility to pivot if needed.
- Trust the Process and Your People: Trust is a critical ingredient in ‘Lazy’ Leadership. It is important to acknowledge that regardless of leadership approach, mistakes and failures in any business are bound to happen—especially in startups. Do you trust your team, especially the leaders on your team, enough to give them room to fail? A trusting and open culture provides the psychological safety that facilitates early identification and communication of potential points of failure and helps the team course correct quickly.
Lazy Leadership in Action
Lazy Leadership is increasingly relevant in today’s world with cross-border teams and hybrid working environments. The ability for a team to work effectively asynchronously relies on strong consistent leadership, enabled by systems and policies, embedded in a company’s culture.
Here are some ways top tech companies have implemented systems that foster distributed autonomy:
- Spotify - Squad Model: Spotify uses a “squad” model, where small, cross-functional teams are given the autonomy to work on specific features or projects. Each squad operates like a mini-startup, with the freedom to make decisions independently of other squads. This arrangement promotes agility, faster decision-making, and higher levels of innovation.
- Netflix - No Rules Rules: Netflix promotes a culture of freedom and responsibility. They have minimal formal policies and encourage employees to use their best judgment in making decisions. Managers are encouraged to delegate decisions to those closest to the issues. This trust-based approach has resulted in a highly adaptive and innovative workforce, where employees feel empowered to take calculated risks and make significant contributions.
Key Takeaways
Once a startup attains product-market fit and is ready to scale, it is a good time for founders to slowly transition away from a bootstrapping mentality and embrace Lazy Leadership. In summary: do less, observe more, trust your leaders, think strategically, and you will be well on your way to stronger teams and leadership success.
Contributors: Tammi Lin, Andit Intasworo
