Elul is Founder Mode
Tech Tribe Dispatch #266
💡 Think:
This week an essay by Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham set off debates in the tech community about tech leadership: “In effect,” Graham wrote, “there are two different ways to run a company: founder mode and manager mode.”
Manager mode is the the conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies, “hire good people and give them room to do their jobs."
Founder mode then, is to adopt a Jobsian style of leadership - getting down in the weeds instead of delegating. The CEO doesn’t just “engage with the company only via his or her direct reports,” "Skip-level" meetings - eschewing hierarchical structure, become the norm.
The wisdom of which mode of leadership can be debated as needed on Twitter and elsewhere: Is it the salvation of successful companies attempting to further scale? Or extreme hustle-mode that will further add to a corporate culture that struggles with work-life balance and embraces a certain cult of personality around the visionary founder.
What is clear to me is that the month of Elul, the month we’re now in, is without a doubt Founder mode.
There are two pivotal months on the Jewish calendar: Nissan, the month of Passover, and Tishrei, the month of Rosh Hashanah and the High Holidays.
The avodah, the divine service and spiritual work of Nissan, is top down. Just like the Exodus of Passover, the Jewish people were schlepped out of Egypt through miracles, with minimal action on their part.
Nissan then represents the orderly, top down delegation of service of the Creator. When you feel a spiritual high, a sense of intense Jewishness, with no action on your part… that could be your Nissan moment.
Then comes the High Holidays, Tishrei, when we connect to G-d on a bottom-up trajectory… We improve ourselves, we make amends, we return to our core essence…
Elul, the month before the High Holidays, is where things get wonky… It’s a time when G-d initiates the spiritual connection - the ‘King is the Field’ as the parable goes… but that’s just the first step. G-d skips the purely hierarchical engagement - instead inspiring us to then take action on our own… Teshuvah, the act of spiritual return and rectification in Judaism, is one that inherently calls on us to transcend the spiritual hierarchies - for on the level of hierarchical level, everything is messed up. But teshuvah let’s us ‘skip level’ and go directly to G-d himself, connecting in place where the mistakes we made never even existed, and bring that transcendence into our lives.
It’s intense, it takes work, but it’s profound.
🏃 DO:
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What was the prayer that kept Sapir Cohen strong during 55 days of Hamas?
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📚 Read:
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📜 Torah for Torah’s Sake: The Life & Times of Rabbi Schneur Zalman Fradkin, the “Torat Chesed”
👮♂️ Messianic Justice & The Future of Policing A transcendent look at the Torah portion.
🔥 Lit:
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🙏 Pray:
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