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Letters to a Young Manager


The Rowboat, #617
LTYM >

Please note that this letter is in-process; the following are my notes

Dear Sophie,
***
Everybody doing their part means that… the great analogy is the rowboat competition. They call it sculling, I think in England, where you have a team of rowers that are all pulling the oars, and you have somebody that's at the front of the boat, who has a megaphone and is keeping time.

Pull.

Right. But what everybody realizes is that if they're not in sync with each other, so if they're not synchronous and they're pulling divergently, the boat won't go as fast. But when everybody pulls together, the boat goes the fastest.

Yeah.

And the interesting thing is the leader. All the leader is doing is acting like a metronome, keeping the beat. It is pull, pull, pull.

And the leader is not facing out the front of the boat. The leader is facing all of the people holding the oars. It's the team that gets you there.
***
Sincerely yours,
Ed
________________________

References...

Takeaways:

It's the team that wins the race

Discussion Questions:


For Further Reading:





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