Bigger than this

I think a lot about scale.

How do you make a contribution that outlasts your presence in the room or your tenure at a given organization? Contributions that are bigger than yourself?

How do you build systems that work for teams of 8 or 80? How do you ensure  there is no single point of failure? That no one person is mission-critical? That everyone on the team feels empowered to achieve his goals, that no one feels micromanaged? 

What's the relationship between scale and impact?

I say this a lot and I continue to find it to be true: people don't scale but processes do.

People can make a difference - they can confound stereotypes, for instance - but it takes changes in process to ensure that the next batch of hires is more diverse.

I've been thinking about this more and more as I get older, which has correlated positively with the number and complexity of the management and leadership roles I've held.

And I think a lot about the importance of media and message to achieving scale  - this, I believe, is the nexus of scale and impact.

Word. Sound. Power.