Leadership
Managing people, decisions and yourself.
8
concepts
6
tools
263
books
How leadership works — step by step
Read these in order. Each takes about 3 minutes.
- 01
Managerial leverage
A manager's job is to multiply the team's output, not to do all the work themselves.
First step: List your activities and rate their leverage.
- 02
Work on your business, not in it
Build systems so the business runs without you doing every task.
First step: Write down how each repeating task is done (a simple checklist is fine).
- 03
OKRs: Objectives and Key Results
Set an inspiring goal and 3–5 measurable results that prove you got there.
First step: Pick 1–3 objectives for the quarter.
- 04
Radical candor
Give feedback that shows you care personally while challenging people directly.
First step: Build real relationships with your team.
- 05
Making decisions under uncertainty
Judge decisions by the thinking behind them, not just the result — and watch out for your brain's shortcuts.
First step: Ask: how sure am I, as a percentage?
- 06
The flywheel
Big results come from many small pushes in the same direction, building unstoppable momentum.
First step: List what drives your growth (e.g. great product → happy customers → referrals).
- 07
First who, then what (hiring)
Get the right people on the team before deciding exactly where to go.
First step: Define the values and behaviours you need.
- 08
Wartime vs peacetime leadership
Calm times need a different leadership style from crises — know which one you're in.
First step: Ask honestly: are we under existential threat?
Tools for leadership
Most useful at these stages
Essential reading
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Ben Horowitz
An honest look at the painful parts of running a company: layoffs, firing friends, near-death moments, and keeping going.
High Output Management
Andrew S. Grove
Intel's former CEO explains management as a production system: focus on the activities that multiply your team's output.
Rework
Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson
Short, punchy essays arguing you can build a business with less: less planning, less funding, less busywork.
Good to Great
Jim Collins
Research on companies that made the leap from average to outstanding, including 'first who, then what'.
The E-Myth Revisited
Michael E. Gerber
Most small businesses fail because the owner is stuck doing the work. Build systems so the business can run without you.
Start with Why
Simon Sinek
Inspiring companies communicate from the inside out: why they exist, then how, then what.
Measure What Matters
John Doerr
How Intel, Google and others use OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to focus and align teams.
Thinking in Bets
Annie Duke
A former poker champion on making smart decisions when you can't know everything — and not judging decisions only by results.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
Our minds run on a fast, intuitive System 1 and a slow, careful System 2 — and the fast one makes predictable mistakes.
Radical Candor
Kim Scott
Be a great boss by caring personally while challenging directly.
Blitzscaling
Reid Hoffman & Chris Yeh
When and how to grow extremely fast, prioritising speed over efficiency in a race to win a big market — and the risks of doing so.
Explore by tag
From the library (263)
An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
An Elegant Puzzle offers engineering founders leadership lessons on systems thinking for team sizing, technical debt management, and succession planning in high-growth environments. Key principles include organizational design frameworks and cross-functional collaboration for effective team building. Vs High Output Management, it delivers specialized tactics for engineering leaders navigating hypergrowth.
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
Crucial Conversations equips founders with leadership lessons for mastering high-stakes talks essential for team building, conflict resolution, and investor negotiations. Key principles include creating safety through mutual purpose, using the STATE model for candid dialogue, and deciding on clear action items. Vs High Output Management, it prioritizes dialogue skills and emotional control over operational leverage.
Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products
A comprehensive guide to product leadership by Marty Cagan and Chris Jones from Silicon Valley Product Group. The book reveals how leading tech companies enable their people to work together to solve hard problems and create extraordinary products through empowered product teams.
High Output Management
High Output Management teaches founders leadership lessons on maximizing output through OKRs, one-on-ones, and high-leverage activities for effective team building and organizational scaling. Key principles include managing like a production process, conducting performance reviews with absolute honesty, and optimizing meetings. Compared to The Making of a Manager, it provides a more rigorous, systems-oriented approach suited for ambitious startups.
Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company
Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel and Time Magazine's 1997 Man of the Year, reveals his strategy for navigating Strategic Inflection Points—massive changes that can make or break a company overnight. A classic of managerial and leadership skills essential for founders facing disruptive change.
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister's classic on managing software teams. Essential insights on productivity, environment, and team dynamics that remain relevant decades later.
Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building
Claire Hughes Johnson, former COO of Stripe, delivers a practical and empathetic guide to company building and scaling people. Drawing from her experience helping Stripe grow from 200 to 7,000+ employees, this 2023 bestseller includes over 100 pages of templates and worksheets for founders and leaders.
Scaling Teams: Strategies for Building Successful Teams and Organizations
A practical guide by Alexander Grosse and David Loftesness for leaders managing teams between 10 and 150 people. This O'Reilly book provides actionable strategies for hiring, management, organization design, culture, and communication during rapid growth.
The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business
Patrick Lencioni shows that organizational health—minimal politics, clarity, high morale—is the ultimate competitive advantage. Essential for scaling companies.
The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age
Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh rethink employer-employee relationships for the startup era. Essential for founders building adaptive teams.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
Patrick Lencioni's business fable revealing the five dysfunctions that undermine team performance and how to overcome them.
The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building
A tactical, no-nonsense guide to building and scaling companies from Silicon Valley's most sought-after CEO coach. Matt Mochary shares the systems, processes, and leadership tools he uses to coach CEOs at companies like Coinbase, Reddit, Brex, and OpenAI.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
The Hard Thing About Hard Things arms founders with raw leadership lessons on surviving crises, layoffs, and peacetime vs wartime CEO transitions for resilient team building. Key principles include taking care of people first, grudgingly giving ground, and managing the struggle without excuses. Vs High Output Management, it confronts emotional realities and no-easy-answers decisions over systematic leverage.
The Mythical Man-Month
Fred Brooks' classic on software project management, essential for software company managers.
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
Fred Brooks's timeless classic on software project management and why adding people to late projects makes them later. Essential for technical founders managing engineering teams.
The Score Takes Care of Itself
Bill Walsh's leadership philosophy that transformed the San Francisco 49ers from worst to legendary dynasty. Focus on excellence in process and preparation rather than outcomes, with lessons applicable to building any organization.
TRANSFORMED: Moving to the Product Operating Model
Marty Cagan and the SVPG team's guide for company leaders driving organizational transformation to the product operating model. This book bridges the gap between traditional IT/project models and how the best tech-powered companies actually operate.
Trillion Dollar Coach
Trillion Dollar Coach imparts founders leadership lessons from Bill Campbell on team-first culture, trust-building, and coaching for scaling trillion-dollar companies. Key use cases include high-impact 1-on-1s, radical candor feedback, and fostering psychological safety in team building. Compared to High Output Management, it prioritizes relationships and emotional intelligence over operational systems.