My leadership toolkit

I've spent 35 years trying to be a better leader. Big & little mistakes. Been fired. Mentors, colleagues, friends, family make me better. Here's what they've taught me...

Welcome to My Next Electric, a newsletter on humans and electrification.

• Investing in EVs, solar & storage — The Batteries Included Fund

• Vehicle design and the future of our electric grid — Night Shift Bikes

• The learning science and humanity of it all — My Next Electric

Today — my leadership toolkit. Core to my investing. Way bigger than that.

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Last night I got to spend an evening with startup founders in Nexus Louisiana’s Ignition program. It was a hoot.

Here’s what went down and why I’m sharing it with you.

The Baton Rouge edit

Nexus is a Baton Rouge institution — 30+ years of coaching, connections and capital for founders there. They just hired my friend Tony Zanders to be their CEO. I’ve worked with him (4.0), invested in his company (Skilltype), and talked life, fatherhood and community with him for a decade.

When Tony asked me to do some coaching with Ignition founders, I was psyched. I dusted off my leadership toolkit and hit the road with a simpler, more honest version:

We had a blast.

• Real talk on putting human customers at the center.

• Tight dialog on how to build genuinely minimal and viable prototypes.

• Amens and fast feedback on how to minimize false positives.

All on top of a firm foundation of trust built by the Nexus team. Founders were helping each other with hard, hard stuff. I felt lucky to be in the room.

I got some good feedback on the toolkit, too. Easy to navigate, concise. Applicable to many of the challenges these early founders were facing.

The entire (free) toolkit is right here 👉 mattcandler.io/leadership

Check it out. Try something. Tell me what works. What doesn’t.

35 years. 1 big folder.

I remember when this all started.

I was packing for my first year of college, and my mom gave me a going-away present — an 8.5” x 11” print out of a portion of Teddy Roosevelt’s 1910 Sorbonne speech commonly known as “The Critic.” It’s been with me ever since. Dozens of pushpin holes in the dog. eared. corners.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

—Theodore Roosevelt. Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Since then, I’ve collected hundreds of things like it. Some inspirational. Some rigorously researched frameworks delivered by true pros. Lots of links and pdfs. It’s a pretty big folder now.

When I left 4.0 five years ago, I went through it all and made a 10-page highlight reel - the most useful stuff for CEOing. It’s helped me:

• Be more useful to CEOs in The Batteries Included Fund

• Become a global All-Star Mentor at TechStars

• Talk shop with friends and former colleagues

• Try out a now-abandoned project I called Soft Skills for Hard Tech

It keeps evolving. Last night was the latest edit, and I like it, for now.

3 reasons I’m sharing my toolkit with you

1. My mentor and friend, AD Frazier, Jr., would have wanted me to.

   AD passed away this fall. He believed in me. Showed me how to lead. Didn’t preach, just walked it. Closest he got to preaching was his email signature — three letters under his two-letter name:
   
   AD
   HUD
   
   Humility, Understanding, Discipline. I got to spend a day with him before he passed. We talked shop. Life and family. He told me I should rethink how I was spending my time. I miss him. Thank you, AD.

   

   AD and his legacy

2. My friend Tony asked.
   It’s weird, this work-life journey. The most interesting moments in my career are these serendipitous next chapters I get to write with people from earlier tours of duty. Beth, Glenn, John on 4.0 after KIPP and NYC. Freeman on B2U after years of early high-school morning school commutes. Ben, John, Lisa at NSNO. Hassan and Nicole, each a two-time alum of 4.0 turned CEO. Another 4.0 alum, Josh, now my executive coach. Tony and his team last night. Wow.

3. My son Warren asked.
   Warren was fighting that infinite fight this week — to get better at something he loves. After (not enough time, I never take enough time) just listening, Teddy’s speech seemed like something worth sharing. I felt closer to my mom and closer to him. What a gift to share Teddy with both of them.

My coaching tree shrub

Some people call networks like these coaching trees: W coaches X; X coaches Y; Y coaches Z. Down the tree you go.

That’s not what it feels like to me, not with all these next chapters folding in over one another.

It feels squattier, crowded, dense — more like a coaching shrub. Everybody jammed in here together, trying their damndest, learning from each other. AD said he learned from me. The 25-year-old me? Yeah, right.

Wait a minute. Warren teaches me. Every. damn. day. Guess you were right about that, too.

I love my squatty, crowded coaching shrub. AD’s here. Tony. My 4.0 fam. Mom. Dad. Warren, too. Maybe some of the founders I met last night will be soon.

Jump in the shrub with us. It’s messy, human, delightful in here.

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