Matt's Leadership Cheat Sheet

I've spent 25 years helping people build innovative organizations trying to do hard things. Along the way, I’ve curated a collection of practical tools for leaders of fast-growing teams. They fit into three categories:

Lead with succession in mind.

• 1 starting point - succession
• 2 sources of informal power
• 3 duties of a board
• 4 duties of a CEO
• 5 types of decisions
• 6 leadership styles

Experiment. Together.

• Pretotyping
• Lean Startup
• Conflict resolution
• Design Thinking
• Exponential thinking
• Integrative negotiations

Be human.

• Invest in the 20-year version of people
• Practice Self-compassion
• Diverse teams do better
• Be aware of cognitive bias
• Read and Build a Second Brain
• Electrify your personal stuff

I keep these frameworks, links to research they’re based on, and examples from my work and from my peers in a compact toolkit (less than 10 pages if you print it). I've come up with exactly zero of these tools on my own, and I’ve misused every one. But that means you can learn from my mistakes, and the stuff I've learned alongside other hard-working, curious leaders who've put these to use growing some of the most impactful organizations in education, energy and other industries.