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First Generation Leaders

The filter is strongest when you have no one to check it against.

Frank TsuroWho you can ask2 minute readAll articles

A leader whose family has run businesses this size hears a second opinion at the dinner table. Someone who has held the same job tells them what the report left out. It costs neither of them anything.

A first-generation leader has one source: the business itself. Everything they hear about the business comes through the business.

Second opinions come from who you know. Not everyone has the same access.

Inherited network

2 views

First generation

One view

InheritedThe board pack and a private reading of it

First generationThe board pack

InheritedSomeone who has seen this problem before

First generationMeeting the problem for the first time

InheritedPeers outside the business

First generationColleagues inside it, who report to you

InheritedA realistic sense of what a number should be

First generationThe number and the person presenting it

InheritedAdvice from people with nothing to lose

First generationAdvice from people the decision affects

Building the second view on purpose.

The answer is not encouragement. It is building, on purpose, the second view that a family network gives others for free.

There is an upside too: no inherited blind spots and no old friends to protect. The aim is to add a second view without losing that.

A large share of Southern and East African infrastructure is led by people in exactly this position. That is an observation about who holds these seats, not about how good they are.

Skill is rarely the problem. Information is.

ArticleInformation2 minute read

The Filter

What reaches you is not what your people are living through. Why bad news gets smaller on its way to the top, what gets left out and 3 ways to hear what is really happening. Read the article ArticleAutomation2 minute read

Precisely Wrong

AI does not argue with a bad brief. What happens when you automate a business that already tells itself good news. The one question to answer before you do. Read the article

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