Change is fractal. It starts with leaders

Link: Leaders Are Leverage, by Corey Ford at Point C

I’ve often shared Corey Ford’s pieces. I find his frameworks and thinking genuinely useful, and he’s been a friend and mentor to me for well over a decade.

This piece outlines his underlying thinking, and why he’s focused where he has:

“When I work with one leader, I'm not working with one person. I'm working with every person on their team, every meeting they'll ever run, every piece of feedback they'll ever give, every subculture they'll ever build. A leader is not a single node in an organization. A leader is a multiplier. Change how one leader leads, and you change what work feels like for everyone around them, and everyone around the people they develop, for years.”

It’s all about seeding culture. I see a lot of similarities in the underlying ideas in Corey’s work and the intention behind culture change manifestos like Emergent Strategy. Change is fractal, bubbling up from one person to affect a whole system.

I was involved in Matter, the accelerator Corey founded, in two ways: first as an entrepreneur, receiving an earlier version of the ideas he continues to teach, and then as a member of the team, helping to deliver them to cohorts of entrepreneurs. It changed my life, and I watched it change the way other participants think about building teams, products, and cultures.

Those ideas are now part of the Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program at Columbia University. If you’re a newsroom leader, I believe you should strongly consider it. And even if you’re not, I recommend that you follow Corey and his work. I guarantee he’ll change your thinking.