Personal Leadership
Bezos and Athena
In 1994, Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras published "Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies," a book based on research comparing 18 visionary exceptional companies to the next top 500. The authors gently highlighted key tenets of the hacker culture, such as the self-maker aspect ("Clock Building, Not Time Telling"), the need to ship ("Preserve the Core/Stimulate Progress"), and the evolution of culture through old and new ("Embrace the Genius of the And"). The book also cleverly identified "Cult-Like Cultures" as a necessary common feature among visionary companies. It takes a keen and careful reader to see the “build my own hacker culture” hint. Bezos does.
In 2001, Amazon's stock plummeted by 90%, prompting Jeff Bezos to seek help from experts like Jim Collins. Collins advised Bezos to focus on building a flywheel in response to the crisis. Bezos realized the importance of nurturing a hacker culture within Amazon and executed what's referred to as a "Great Poser Ejection," which helped the company rebound and achieve continued success. His epiphany came from Collins’ words on stage: “In times like this you want to respond not by reacting to bad news, but by building a flywheel” and the realization that he has his “flywheel” and it’s naturally sabotaged due to his own neglect.
The term "poser" originates from skater culture, referring to individuals who attempt to fit into a subculture without possessing the necessary life-long skill investment or concrete expertise. Hackers tend to borrow concepts and terminology from other groups. Visionary executives seldom use the term "hacker culture" when discussing their methods, as it is reserved for insiders of the culture. Instead, they often employ the term "leadership," which carries a more positive and non-threatening connotation. Similarly, they avoid using the word "poser" in public. Clever alternatives such as "surface-level contributor" or "non-innovator" appear in scathing internal emails from figures like Elon Musk. For example, when Elon Musk fired half of Twitter's staff in 2023 for their non-innovative, surface-level contributions, few understood that the decision was based on a lack of valuable Git commits over time.
Our Predictive Analytics AI, which maps mindsets based on sentiment analysis of author groups, suggests that visionary leaders view themselves as part of a subgroup or subculture that creates and fosters a maker culture. These leaders understand the importance of personal leadership and the need for autonomy within their organizations to drive innovation and success.
Interestingly, these concepts are not new. Throughout history, humanity has always recognized the value of artisans – lifelong connoisseurs and experts within various maker groups. The Ancient Greeks even dedicated a goddess to this concept – Athena. This connection did not go unnoticed by the young hackers at top institutions of learning and their teachers. Internal research platforms were often named "Athena," as were computational tools used to map battlefields and aid in wartime decision-making. It should come as no surprise that visionary leaders in the 21st century have embraced these concepts within the realm of innovative business domains.
All hackers are strong leaders, characterized by their fierce independence and conscious personal choice to follow their own path. Hacker teams that come together form synergies united by a shared vision, rather than authority. In fact, the more powerful and high-performing a hacker team is, the less outside authority they tend to recognize. This is the essence of self-empowerment, with concrete accomplishment instead of social status or perception as the primary driver.
As a mature company embarking on the agile journey, it's crucial to understand that embracing this new mindset will involve a shift in culture. This shift involves moving away from rigid top-down management and towards a more flexible and adaptive approach that empowers your teams to self-govern. By fostering an environment that encourages personal leadership, innovation, and shared vision, you can create a high-performing, nimble, driven, and highly autonomous crew that will propel your company towards success in the ever-changing business landscape.
The transition may be challenging, but the rewards are immense. As a potential ASE customer, ask yourself: is this truly what you want? Do your own research and determine what is of greater value to you - a high-performing, agile team ready to face challenges head-on and persevere, or an obedient, pleasant, and compliant herd that may struggle to adapt to change? By embracing personal leadership and fostering a culture of continuous improvement, your organization can thrive in the age of digital transformation and maintain a competitive edge.
There are numerous examples of the Hacker Culture permeating even the most conservative environments, leading to significant improvements. For instance, commercial air travel has benefited from Cockpit Resource Management (CRM), a discipline that governs how flight crew members exercise personal leadership, equilateral collaboration, and eager accountability under extreme duress. This model, originating from Hacker Culture, makes air travel the safest mode of transportation today. Similarly, Bridge Resource Management (BRM) is becoming the norm in the commercial maritime industry.
Personal Leadership is the first discipline we teach our customers' champions during the self-awareness phase of our coaching program. It's crucial to understand that all leadership is personal leadership, and all competitiveness is competition with oneself.
Commitment and loyalty, which we will discuss elsewhere, are additional personal leadership-related drivers that contribute to the success of hacker teams. The commitment element requires its own explanation, as it's not based on loyalty to another person, such as one's boss.
The bottom line is that by fostering personal leadership within your organization, you can create a culture of self-empowered individuals who are dedicated to achieving shared goals and driving innovation, rather than an obedient collective that follows orders without question. Achieving both ultimate control over employees and fostering natural innovation is not possible, just as having both choice and slavery is impossible.
Survival Depends on Personal Leadership
Consider the following two examples highlighting the interaction of group dynamics influenced by incumbent culture and individual choice of action or inaction in critical situations. These cases emphasize the importance of individuals taking initiative and making responsible decisions. Personal leadership begets accountability.
We offer this example because of the striking similarities we see between a large, conservative American Insurance company and an old, decrepit, and neglected container ship. The crew of SS El Faro was well aware of the impending storm, yet they headed into it and met their demise, unable to take the initiative or make appropriate decisions to save themselves. Like the container ship, the company has ample time to act, but that action never comes.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=SS+El+Faro+Disaster
IIn 2014, the South Korean ferry MV Sewol capsized and sank, causing the deaths of over 300 passengers, most of whom were high school students. The disaster was attributed to numerous factors, including overloading, improper cargo securing, and poor decision-making by the crew. The captain and crew failed to exercise individual initiative, resulting in their inability to respond effectively to the unfolding crisis.
The Sewol tragedy serves as another example of how critical individual initiative is to survival. Had the crew members taken accountability and made better decisions, the outcome should have been different. This incident serves as a stark reminder that the capacity to own the outcome is either present or absent in all the circumstances alike.
Furthermore, it is essential to acknowledge the impact of cultural influences on individual initiative and decision-making. In some East Asian cultures, such as South Korea and China, the emphasis on collectivism and hierarchy inevitably leads to submissive behaviors and reluctance to challenge authority. These cultural traits may contribute to individuals' failure to take the initiative even in critical situations, such as in the case of the Sewol disaster or even when bystanders fail to help pedestrians hit by a car to avoid taking responsibility for the outcome.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Ferry+MV+Sewol
Both of these examples underline the significance of individual initiative. The word that should be coming to mind is reliability. By fostering a culture of personal accountability within organizations, we can create an environment where individuals will mature to become self-empowered to make decisions, take responsibility, and contribute to the overall success and survival of the team. Overcoming cultural barriers and promoting individual initiative leads to better decision-making, problem-solving, and most importantly adaptability in the face of adversity.
Linguistic Telltale: A Glimpse into Group Dynamics
Analyzing the internal language of a particular group can provide valuable insights into their values and beliefs. The language spoken by individuals often reveals a great deal about their background and mindset. For instance, the language of medical professionals differs from that of lawyers, while the language of biomedical researchers closely resembles that of pharmacists and doctors. Language is one of the most effective ways to determine whether different groups belong to the same domain.
We refer to this as context boundary, with the dialect term being "ubiquitous language."
When viewed through this lens, it becomes evident that software engineers at a certain Delaware-based insurance company have little in common with the Eastern American Hacker Culture. In contrast, software engineers at Google maintain strong ties to the Western American Hacker Culture. It's important to note that the mentioned dialects represent general regional and subcultural variations, with specific dialects depending on group affiliations. This observation implies that the engineers working for the insurance company do not share the same set of values as those belonging to the world's most skilled engineering group.
NOTE: Eric S. Raymond (ESR) maintains a somewhat dated but clean and politically correct Jargon File for the cultural community. Most terms remain relevant and widely accepted today. Hacker Culture is a culture, not a subculture, and regional and subcultural variations of the language exist. The RTP, NC hacker dialect is the jargon used by our company. Traditional terms include The Meaning of ‘Hack’, hacker; Crackers, Phreaks, and Lamers, cracker; and rapidly expanding international Style since 2010."
To better understand the sentiments and perspectives of the Eastern Hacker Culture in relation to themselves and generic engineers, consider the following terms and notions:
cog: A term for a 'generic' resource offered by offshoring staffing companies, often not driven by a love for the trade like hackers. Many hackers believe the existence of cogs is a modern-day tragedy. Lack of accomplishment is implied in this term. (subcategory of polite traditional ‘random’)
peg: A cog who spends most of their time in meetings and calls, often end-to-end, considering that 'a good day of work.' (polite traditional ‘muggle‘)
knob: A peg in middle-management or a waterfall project manager at a Laggard company. (polite traditional ‘chainik‘)
hacker: An individual born for engineering, passionate about their trade, and working hard to attain community recognition for their problem-solving skills as demonstrated through remarkable software serving the greater good in production.
cracker: A criminal attempting to gain malicious access to a supposedly secure system or stealing intellectual property; hackers dislike crackers.
poser: Someone who is not a hacker but uses buzzwords to appear more accomplished than they truly are; hackers use simple English words to describe their ideas.
champion: Someone determined to become a hacker, seeking acceptance within one or more hacker communities.
snurf: (verb) Fiddling with a phone, reading email, or engaging in other distractions during pair-programming or swarming ceremonies of extreme programming; considered unprofessional by hackers.
lol: Derived from 'laugh out loud,' it signifies the instant gratification of software development that drives the hacker mindset, explaining their affinity for Agile Manifesto, Extreme Programming, Fluent Development Style, REPL, 12 Factor App, and more.
hinder-code: (or just hinder)(noun) Hinder-code refers to unprofessionally written code, often created by copying and pasting from internet sources like Stack Overflow without much thought or consideration. This type of code typically includes dead code and sections that are commented out, leading to inefficiencies and potential issues.
Understanding these terms helps shed light on the mindset and values of the hacker community.
Where is your company on the competence map?
The conflict revolves around personal leadership: a hacker refuses to be micromanaged, delivering the best possible value to uphold their professional integrity. This can be problematic in some organizations. On the other hand, a cog requires explicit instructions on what to do and how to do it, often resulting in inconsistent outcomes. Yet, in some places, that's considered a "safe employee." Ultimately, a hacker operates autonomously, generating significantly more value than a cog ever could. Each company must decide for itself whether to foster incompetence or performance - as it's practically impossible to have both in the same environment since one inevitably eradicates the other. Hacker Culture is a performance-based culture, in contrast to a perception-based culture. Management can guide hacker teams, but not dictate them.
Leadership starts with oneself. ASE cultivates leaders from both existing and newly acquired talent, aiming to reach a critical mass of champions within your team so that your Hacker Culture can take root and have the opportunity to persist. This is achieved through a system of outcomes and supporting training. To learn why and how this works, visit our Methods page.
Once your team is performing, ASE provides another crucial service: helping entrepreneurs navigate the unique challenges of managing self-empowered teams of leaders, which significantly differs from managing compliant cogs. In reality, leaders cannot be managed, only influenced (which is precisely the goal). Counterintuitively, for this to happen, the entrepreneur or manager must engage and participate as an integral part of the hacker team - not by barking orders, but by sharing in the vision. ASE will assist in establishing this leadership dynamic effectively throughout the team development journey.
Vadim Kuhay (rdd13r)
CIO | Principal Coach