No, but these are slogans that seldom survive contact with reality.
"Managers Hoard Information. Leaders Overshare." - sure, until they don't. Because as companies grow, the probability that there is a hostile or careless employee in the audience approaches 1. That employee may tell a friend working at a competitor, may talk to a journalist, and so on. Most tech companies are funded on the principle of radical transparency, but then start compartmentalizing information because oversharing doesn't scale.
"Managers Weaponize Policy. Leaders Bend Rules for People." - likewise, this works up to a point. Past that point, if every "leader" within the company is bending the rules, you end up in an unmanageable mess, and outcomes that are unfair and legally perilous ("how come the company made an exception for Jill but not Joe?").
"Managers Fire Fast. Leaders Coach, Then Help People Land Softly." / "Managers Avoid Hard Conversations. Leaders Run Toward Them." - wait, so which one is it? Firing someone is a hard conversation, and in my experience, line managers often avoid it, letting performance problems fester for too long. Then, it's the "leaders" (the top brass - founders, etc) who decide that things have gone too far and we need to make brutal 10% cuts across the board.
"Managers Reward Compliance. Leaders Reward Dissent." - this varies, but the tolerance for dissent is usually higher among line managers than top leadership, simply because dissent is guaranteed once you hit a certain scale and your company can't be run as a perpetual discussion club. At some point, you need to get behind the plan or look for another job. I'd wager that Steve Jobs wasn't all that keen on dissent from random employees. Similarly, if you work at Palantir and tell them that they should sever ties with the Dept Homeland Security, I'm sure they will be happy to show you the door.
> Then, it's the "leaders" (the top brass - founders, etc) who decide that things have gone too far and we need to make brutal 10% cuts across the board.
I agree with the general sentiment of your points, but aren't those 10-20-30% layoffs an attempt to make the bottom line look better before the call with the investors? In my experience most layoffs have a goal to reduce spend by X rather than churn underperformers. And often times managers aren't even allowed to target based on merit, but on some weird metric which is a mixture of compensation and impact.
Well, if you define leaders as people who do the things outlined in the article, then sure, it tautologically describes the traits of leaders. But then, it means that Steve Jobs wasn't a leader, Bill Gates wasn't a leader, Jeff Bezos isn't a leader - basically, none of the most successful business-builders qualify. Apparently, they were all just managers.
So then, who is the article about? And more to the point, if it's not a recipe for success, why should I follow its advice?
