Leading From a Spreadsheet

Most things are more complicated than we think.
Leadership is no exception.

Leadership is not simply influence.
Minimalism is not reductionism.

A leader is someone with followers. This is reductionist.

In my first job, the person who “led” the entire branch holed up in his office on most days. I was a lowly warehouse worker. The branch manager only rarely even made an appearance in the warehouse, and rarely spoke to anyone other than his direct reports.

He was not a leader because it’s impossible to lead with a spreadsheet and commands to the Human Resources department.

People are not and never will be commodities, even when they’re treated as such.


Just so you know …

Starting June 1st (tomorrow), I will be doing a digital declutter per Cal Newport’s latest book “Digital Minimalism”. (You need to read this. And at the moment I’m publishing this, you can get the audiobook for $8.99. That’s almost a steal. Buy this book NOW!)

What this means for me: I am logging out of 99% of my social media for the month of June. All social media will be deleted from my phone. This blog will continue to post to Twitter automatically. It will not auto-post to Facebook or LinkedIn and I will NOT be logging into Facebook for the month. (I haven’t entirely decided what my LinkedIn behavior will be for June, as I do have business contacts on that platform,)

Two solutions for this:

  1. Use an RSS feed reader like Feedly or Feed Wrangler. Or just download an app like Reeder. If you use the Internet in place of a newspaper (Like most of the current population), you need this in your life anyway. Just drop this URL into one of these service: https://www.bernieanderson.com/blog/?format=rss.

  2. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter! I will include links to the daily posts, along with my “Three on Thursday” in your inbox every Thursday morning. Just sign up in the box below.


    Would love to track with you as I seek what “Digital Minimalism” will mean for me.