Most leaders don’t really know what they’re doing. They wing it. They handle most issues on a case-by-case basis. Even those who have gained experience seem to operate based on muscle memory, as opposed to having given things some extra thought. While your instincts might be enough to achieve ok results, this approach rarely supplies anything beyond that. Then you wonder why your team is misaligned, why new hires take ages to become effective, or why most change initiatives die halfway through the effort.

Recently, in an interview, I was asked about my “operating system” for tech leaders. I had one. You probably don’t, but you should. That’s one leadership upgrade that’s simple and highly impactful.

Why You Need To Write It Down

Having a simple OS forces clarity. It’s not about being a guru or having all the answers. You don’t need to wait until you’ve got everything figured out before you can start formalizing it. It is about taking a bit of time to deliberately decide what sort of a leader you want to be and what type of organization you want to lead. Don’t fret over it not being perfect and having to be changed with time. That’s the expected scenario. No one should still be trying to follow the same frameworks of a decade ago without having adaptations.

Doing so will help you in delegation, scaling your organization, hiring the right people, onboarding new managers, and making change happen. You don’t need to write a manifesto. 10 bullet points and 15 minutes of thinking can make all the difference in the world. I’ll even let you in on a secret: I’ve seen people write down those bullet points tersely, and ask their nearest LLM to make those readable. Magic.

Tell-Tale Symptoms of a Missing OS

You can usually tell that you’re using oral history and hand gestures to pass down lore instead of doing something a bit more formalized. For example, when every team is acting a bit differently because managers don’t have clear guiding principles. A bit like repeated photocopies, each one gets something that’s less accurate and legible, making culture branch out as the organization grows.

Change initiatives stop dead in their tracks the second you move your attention elsewhere because there’s no clear way of managing them. Delegation seems to lead to entropy instead of autonomy and acceleration. In general, you find yourself clearing things up, repeating messages, “realigning,” and just spending an awful lot of time nudging people back in the right direction.

Yes, leadership often consists of a lot of repetition, because people don’t always “get” things the first time. Nevertheless, you can definitely minimize the amount of repetition required to make things stick.

Your Minimum Viable OS

So you’re sold! Or so I hope. How do you get started? Easy, clear up a week and have a personal offsite where it’s only you, a notepad, and a couple of pens. Start writing. Kidding!

Choose a subject, and start a 15-minute timer. Write down bullet points and thoughts. When the time is up, reword it to be comprehensible (again, using LLMs is allowed). Post it, e.g., create a Notion folder titled “OS” that you then share.

Not sure which should be your first subject? Pick the one that feels the most timely from this list (or choose randomly):

• How are teams managed? Rituals, one-on-ones, timeframes.
• Risk management. How should people decide what to do, and when is escalation expected.
• Driving change. Who is responsible for a change, how it is tracked, what are the progress and success metrics, and who and when will reassess the direction.
• Autonomy guide. What’s needed to make delegation effective? For example, define the responsibilities of a Feature Owner to make communication with peers straightforward.
• Decision-making framework. Do you expect people to write pitches? Show options considered? Who needs to be involved?
• Communication norms. Are you ok with things being spammed everywhere? Are there certain things that should be kept to a specific Slack channel or only mail?
• Hiring, Onboarding, and Coaching philosophy.
  

These are just a few ideas about things I commonly see my clients repeat. I’m sure you can find more.

Leaders don’t scale by always increasing their workload and aiming to do more. Writing is the simplest way to immediately improve things and level up your organization.