
I and We - runesoerensen
http://www.aaronkharris.com/i-and-we-1
======
birken
Great post. I've always thought a good metric on how much founders really care
about culture is to see how many early employees still work at mature
companies. Retaining somebody for 1 year is easy, but retaining somebody for 5
years is really really hard.

I found that an unnamed founder (to protect his ego) had a great statement on
this topic:

> And the other thing worth mentioning is, on the first ten people on the
> culture and team topic, I think everyone doesn't realize until they go
> through it themselves, how important it is because in life and media people
> focus too much on founders. Here we are and we are reinforcing the
> structural narrative that Stripe is about John and Patrick and Pinterest is
> about Ben. When the vast majority of what our companies do, 99.9% are done
> by people that are not us, right? It's obvious when you say it but it's very
> much not the macro narrative. These are abstracts and you associate them
> with certain people. For companies like Apple and others, Steve Jobs was a
> tiny, tiny part at the end.

> Source:
> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Dl8rZ6qwE&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Dl8rZ6qwE&feature=youtu.be&t=21m30s)

If I were looking to join a company, these are the kind of statements that
would make me want to work for that founder.

------
striking
I'll just leave something I posted to my Facebook a few months ago, because it
seems relevant.

> A tip for future leaders: leadership means absorbing blame while deflecting
> success. All too often, I see leaders that do the opposite.

> When your team succeeds, make sure people know that it was a team effort.
> The _team_ succeeded. Likewise, when your team fails, you should take full
> responsibility for it. It's not so-and-so's fault that s/he made a mistake,
> it's your fault for giving them the space to do it. _I_ messed up.

> Onward and upward!

> (PS: Obviously this assumes a good environment, where leaders have close to
> full control over what they and the teams are doing. If that's not the case,
> then obviously you have issues that are more important than who gets the
> blame.)

~~~
akharris
I think this is right up to a point. While good leaders take first blame
publicly, they do need to figure out the causes internally. There are many
times where the fault actually belongs to someone specific. That's really
important to learn.

~~~
striking
Right, this was meant in a public sense.

------
Theodores
I think the use of 'I' and 'we' is most interesting in Formula 1 where the
drivers always use 'we' in the winner's driver's conference. Hang on a minute,
you were the one driving, nobody else was in the car, yet you use the word
'we'? What is going on?

Well, at times, they also use the word 'I'. This is in the other scenario -
losing! 'I clipped the kerb' etc. But you don't get the losers in the driver's
conference, hence 'we' is the term used. F1 is very much about individuals
wanting to win, team mates are perhaps the most terrifying rivals as they have
an identical car - they have to be beaten before the rest of the field can be
beaten. Yet it is always 'we' and 'the team', even though there is nobody else
in the team doing the driving for them. Sure there are things like good calls
for pitstops that comes from the guys in the garage, but it isn't a team sport
like cricket/rugby/football is.

Personally I think that 'we' is an important word to use in the workplace as
it sends out a quite powerful signal that someone is part of a team, even if
'we' can be used nefariously, e.g. to not acknowledge blame for having broken
something.

~~~
david-given
OTOH --- but I won't try to argue myself, as this story from _The Codeless
Code_ does it so much better. (Cut-and-pasted here, as it's short.)

[http://thecodelesscode.com/case/106](http://thecodelesscode.com/case/106)

A certain monk was known throughout the Temple for his humility. When
discussing flaws in his clan’s software he always took personal
responsibility, yet when receiving praise for marvelous features crafted by
him alone, he always gave credit to the entire team. Eventually word of the
monk came to old Jinyu, Abbess Over All Clans And Concerns.

“So,” she said to her chief abbot, “this monk says 'I failed' after the
defeats of others, and 'we triumphed' after his own victories?”

“So it is said throughout the Temple,” said the abbot.

“Bring him to me,” commanded Jinyu.

When this was done, Jinyu surprised all in attendance by striking the monk
with her cane and sentencing him to thirty days’ hard labor in the data mines.
After the stunned monk had been taken away the abbot nervously approached
Jinyu to inquire the reason.

Jinyu struck the abbot. “Fool! Consider the monk’s algorithm. When he says 'I
failed', what is most probably the truth?”

“That others have failed,” said the abbot, flinching.

Jinyu struck him again. “And when the monk says 'we triumphed', what does he
most likely mean?”

“That victory was his alone,” said the abbot, wincing in pain.

The ancient priestess twirled her cane overhead, so fast that the very air
whined in anguish, until with a thunderclap she brought it down hard on the
floor in front of the terrified abbot. “The only thing praiseworthy about this
boastful monk is that he has mastered the art of one-to-one mapping.
Meanwhile, what am I to do with the rest of you idiots? You were deceived by a
simple substitution cipher that your brains had already decoded.”

~~~
Theodores
Many thanks for that, I shall now read the code-less-code...

------
johngalt
Separate process and identity. It's not "I/we succeeded, or failed." Rather it
is "we've found what works and what doesn't work".

------
eliza1wright
I like the author's use of the word "modesty", but maybe "humility" is really
what we're looking for. Modesty means balanced and moderate, but sometimes
leaders need to take feedback without trying to balance it (i.e. defend
themselves). Take their lickings, so to speak. Those are the times that true
growth happens.

~~~
akharris
That's an interesting point. I hadn't really parsed the difference between the
two terms, but there is one. I think it ends up calling for both, depending on
the situation.

------
rokhayakebe
I can say with utmost honesty this post made me happy. You just get it man.
And unfortunately people who do not get this, just won't.

You have people who are all inclusive and people who just want everything to
be centered around them. Such attitude is simply toxic for the simple reason
that these people are far more interested in how the world perceive them, then
the advancement of the works.

------
sachitgupta
Another interesting thing to look at is how founders talk about their team -
do people work _for_ them or _with_ them?

Great passage from this post on leadership and mentoring:
[http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/12/02/whose-life-
are...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/12/02/whose-life-are-you-
going-to-change/)

You looked after me when I got there and treated me like a friend, not an
employee. You refused to say “he works for me” you always said, “he works with
me.”

------
philtar
The word 'Ego' was just completely hijacked.

