Week 4

Evidence round

4 to 5 of you, 60 seconds each: last week's delegation and buy-in audit.

What are you hoarding, and what was the honest reason?

No artifact means not done.

What question did the pre-read leave you with?

One question each, 30 seconds.

If three of you are stuck on the same thing, we slow down there. Silence means we move fast.

Adding feels productive, multiplying feels slow

You read the arithmetic: followers add, leaders multiply. The hard part is your hours. Most seniors coach their weakest people. That is emergency care, not multiplication.

Whether you lead a team of reports or lead technical direction without reports: EMs develop leaders among reports, ICs develop other go-to engineers so they stop being the only one.

Source: John Maxwell, the law of explosive growth

The rescue test: who typed the fix

You read Wiseman and Fournier. Here is the hard part.

In a code review, a rescue writes the fix in the comment. Coaching asks one question and stops, even when you already see the answer. The first week of not answering feels slow. That slowness is the investment.

Source: Liz Wiseman, Multipliers

Source: Camille Fournier, The Manager's Path

SWVL, 20 to 70+ engineers

Through the NASDAQ listing, there was no way to add that growth by leading followers.

The only move that scaled was developing people who could lead without me.

Debrief: where the hours went

3 to 4 pairs share their numbers on the board.

If your best people got the least of you, what exactly are you multiplying?

Teach-back 1

One pair, 8 minutes, both speak: the framework, an owned story, and where the law breaks.

Then 7 minutes of structured discussion. Roles: one challenger, one connector, one summarizer.

Your leadership bus factor is probably 1

You read the one-pager: a leader with a bus factor of 1 is the same risk as a repo with one, just unnamed.

Whether you lead a team of reports or lead technical direction without reports, both tracks raise the number the same way: deliberate transfer.

Source: bus factor and succession planning, standard engineering practice

The first succession conversation needs no title

Legacy thinking reverses a common career fear. You read why. Here is how the transfer starts, on both tracks.

EM version: "You run the next incident review. I will be in the room, in the back." IC version: "I want the team to ask you about this system, not me. What do you need from me first?"

Source: John Maxwell, the law of legacy

The Breadfast handover

A handover doc with a named successor, written before anyone asked for it, made the exit boring.

Boring was the point. Succession is a practice you run while you are still there, not a crisis response.

Debrief: who got named

Show of hands: who named a real person in all 5 bullets?

What do you hold today, a system, a decision, or a relationship, that has no second holder?

Take-home: the capstone draft

One behavior for 30 days, anchored in one real, named problem where the gap costs you today. Start from your lowest arc in the self-assessment.

Due Wednesday, 2 days before the case clinic. Reviewed in your 1:1 mentorship session, never presented. Counts as done: a real named problem. Plans without one get sent back.

Teach-back 2

Second pair, 8 minutes, both speak: the framework, an owned story, and where the law breaks.

Then 7 minutes of structured discussion. Same roles, rotated: challenger, connector, summarizer.

Next Friday: the case clinic

No pre-read. Two real cases, read live, argued by opposing camps. Nothing to prepare.

One question to carry into the week: if you left in 30 days, would it keep working? You have 30 days to change the answer.