Rob Rodin

Rob Rodin is visiting today. Whenever he visits, he usually leaves me with one major point to think about -- sort of like leadership-by-koan.

For example, once he handed me and Rohit a sheet of paper with the lyrics to Paul Simon's "The Sounds of Silence" on it, and the following lines in bold:

People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening.

On Friday he met with Joyce and made a dozen decisions; I was disappointed with some of the decisions but I understand that part of my growth as an individual and as part of a team is internalizing the Rolling Stones' line,

You can't always get what you want,
But if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.

It occurs to me that Rob, because of the life he leads, has spoken with and listened to tens of thousands of people just this year -- and it is in his life, intertwingling with others, as a highly connected and charismatic person, that he is able to influence a tremendous number of people in the world, sometimes by speaking and sometimes by listening, sometimes by supporting and sometimes by not supporting -- and this in turn influences the future, as Brian researched,

"The future is already here; it's just unevenly distributed."

This type of future-influence I've found common to many superconnectors like Rob, but the thing that strikes me about Rob in particular is that even when I disagree with him, I find myself wanting to follow his lead and to do the best I can.

I've learned from Rob that a big part of leadership is providing constraints to an individual or team, and then letting them figure out what to do given those constraints. Sometimes the constraints are tough -- for example, you cannot have money for this, or you must get this done by this aggressive date -- and I cannot always understand why the constraints are chosen. But I do believe that an individual or team who figures out what to do -- and does it well, given the constraints -- is much stronger and more capable for going through the process.