document updated 14 years ago, on Sep 29, 2010

I looked into the bucket of truth, and what I saw was truly frightening:

When I joined FreeGeek, it was a small enough organization that I could accomplish major tasks by myself, even if it sometimes took herculean effort.

We're big enough now that it's impossible for one person to accomplish important tasks. The only way to accomplish major goals now — the only way that I(Dee) can scale — is to use force multiplication. I have to convince others that my ideas are beneficial to the organization, and get them to follow my lead.

In short, I must learn management/leadership techniques that I have avoided for so long.

Various things that I have to work on, that I've never had to think about before:

Stop being so timid socially. Timidty is clearly incompatible with leadership. To get the job done, sometimes you have to grab the bull by the fucking horns.
Building rapport with other people I'll be working with.
- Coming out of the closet as gender-nonconforming complicates this somewhat, but it's not like I really have a choice.
Being very thoughtful about what I ask people to do.
- If I ask people to do too many poorly-thought-out tasks, my brand equity / social currency will suffer. Because it's important to not waste people's time, I have to spend a little more time making sure my ideas are good.
- Just knowing you have a good idea isn't enough — you have to convince other people to follow your lead too. Figuring out how to "sell" your idea can make everything go much more smoothly than if you just throw poorly-explained ideas out there, and hope that they'll grab on to some piece of it.
Interpersonal skills generally. I have a LOT to learn.