Decentralized Leadership

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The other week in our discussion of hiring I quoted one of my favorite CEOs, Tom Murphy, with his advice to all aspiring leaders, “hire great people and leave them alone.” If in prior weeks we focused on how to hire, this week’s post is all about how to “leave them alone.”

The best leaders empower their people to do great work by clearly articulating their desired end state (what does winning look like), training them well, then doing exactly as Murphy urges and leaving them alone.

To learn how to effectively decentralize our own leadership we’ll look to both military history and computer science.

1st Viscount Nelson (what a title) on Decentralized Leadership

Admiral Horatio Nelson, foil to Napoleon, is one of the greatest naval leaders in history. Famous for bold, unconventional tactics and a personal brand of leadership built on a shared trust with those he lead there are many reasons for any leadership nerd to study him. For today’s post it’s most instructive to review the way he empowered those around him to be successful by taking a decentralized approach to his leadership.

In an era that predated radio communications by more than a century how is it that someone could lead a coordinated battle at sea among ships powered by the wind?

For Nelson, the answer was as simple as it was effective. He eschewed the notion of rigid hierarchies in an era where class and station were the norm. Famous for hosting dinners in his personal quarters with officers from across his fleet, running different tactical scenarios back and forth over a shared meal where rank was forgotten for the duration of the evening.

Nelson treated his fellow officers as equals, encouraging dissent regardless of where an individual fell in the pecking order. Over the course of weeks and months these dinners strengthened the bond among teammates while instilling within them a confidence to act decisively as instruments of Nelson’s will without explicitly having to be told his expectations and desires for their every tactical move.

This unique brand of leadership culminated in one of the greatest naval victories in history at the Battle of Trafalgar which, though it would see Nelson fatally wounded, ushered in more than a century of British naval dominance.

Microservices vs. Monolith

Taking a hard right turn from military history, let’s briefly review the way decentralization is leveraged in Computer Science and the lessons we as leaders can learn from that concept.

From AWS:

A microservices architecture, also known as a, “distributed architecture” is the modern software development alternative to the monolithic approaches of the past. As leaders, we should work to cultivate a similar distributed architecture on our teams.

While a distributed, microservices architecture often takes more up front planning to build than a monolithic one (much like training your team well is a lengthy time investment of its own) over the long run it offers a more flexible, resilient, efficient way to build an application. Traits which any aspiring leader should work to cultivate on their team.

Why should you care about decentralization?

Okay maybe you aren’t leading a fleet of ships into battle or building the next tech giant, so why care about decentralization on your team? For the same reasons Admiral Nelson leveraged it to defeat the French and Amazon uses it to fulfill millions of customer orders each day:

• Speed

• Resilience

• Commitment

Speed

Think of Nelson facing off with the French at the Battle of the Nile. His fleet defeated their opponent in just seven hours after two months of pursuit. More impressive than the speed at which Nelson and his fleet secured victory is the fact that over 7 hours he issued only 9 orders, trusting his commanders to execute his vision because he had trained them well and knew that if he stayed out of their way they would be more effective.

Your team too will deliver more efficiently if they do not need to consult you for every small decision, constantly running things up the chain of command.

Resilience

Much like a single investment being riskier than a diversified retirement portfolio, our example of monolithic vs. distributed architecture shows the dangers of centralization. A team with decentralized authority will always be more resilient than one that relies on a single, monolithic hierarchy which can’t possible be deployed across all fronts at once.

It is this, “delegation to the point of anarchy” which allowed Tom Murphy to grow Capital Cities broadcasting from a single TV station in Albany to a media giant which merged with Disney despite constant volatility across the media landscape.

When you decentralize decision making authority down to your team you better prepare them to be effective amidst the challenges of operating in a dynamic environment.

Commitment

There is no more powerful force multiplier for a team than for the members of that team to be fully committed to their mission. Nelson’s commanders were willing and prepared to take risks because they new that he had delegated his full authority to them.

This level of commitment breeds ownership across your team which ultimately leads those team members to consistently go the extra mile in an effort to live up to the privilege of that responsibility.

How to cultivate decentralized authority on your team

Assuming you’re now fully bought in to the values of following in Nelson’s footsteps and stealing from the techniques of computer science the question becomes how to successfully delegate authority to those you lead. Three principles:

1. Communicate clearly

2. Hire well

3. Train even better

We’ve reviewed communication, hiring, and training in this newsletter before so I won’t spend additional time on them here. If you follow these three principles you’ll effectively decentralize your leadership and empower your team to be successful as a result. In doing so you’ll create a team that operates with speed, is resilient, and committed to success.

See y’all next week.