Letters to Leadership: L

Attention, Algorithms, and Alignment

Letters to Leadership is a series of acronyms that together form a framework designed to encourage, enrich, and empower other leaders.

Join me as I write one for every letter of the alphabet!

Love. ❤️

When I wrote about how vocabulary has shaped my life, I included a bit about the different meanings of love.

Valentine's Day has already came and went and every year it showcases the myriad of creative ways we express our thoughts about love. Contrasting cheap expressions to what giving and receiving love actually means is a worthy pursuit.

We all know at its most genuine, sincere, and earnest…it truly is what life is all about. But it’s easy to roll our eyes when commercialized and manipulated into a cheap commodity.

Not sure if you’ve seen the movie Lady Bird, but one quote comes to mind about love that I bring to mind often:

In the movie, the lead character is a high school student applying for colleges. A nun reads one of her essays, and a lesson about love comes about:

“You clearly love Sacramento,” Sister Sarah Joan tells her.

Lady Bird, surprised, says, “I do?”

“You write about Sacramento so affectionately,” the nun says, “and with such care.”

“Well,” Lady Bird replies, “I was just describing it.”

“Well, it comes across as love,” Sister Sarah Joan says.

“Sure,” Lady Bird says unconvincingly. “I guess I pay attention.”

Sister Sarah Joan then has a point to make, in the form of a question.

“Don’t you think they are the same thing - love and attention?”

I think that’s a great way to think about love in the context of leadership. Focused attention on the right things at the right times in the right places with the right people creates and appreciates value.

When we're present, engaging, and encouraging, love finds a way.

Logic. 🤖

This L led me to learn more about the origin of logic, which is a deep well that will reward the curious philosopher. I've reasoned that writing quickly about this subject will save me thousands of hours thought!

The core function of leadership is to solve problems. In order to do that, a leader must use logic and reasoning to explore the answers through action.

If you're curious about exploring your life's logic, try writing 100 algorithms. This is a Heroic exercise that I found fun and enlightening. If you're interested in more Heroic tools, let me know!

Pick up your pen and write if-then statements or keep a note on your phone to take inventory of the algorithms running your operating system. 🤖

“If I wake up up the morning, then I will take the dogs out.”

“If I see my neighbor, then I will smile and wave.”

“If I feel stressed, then I will focus on my breathing.”

You can also use “before I / then I” or “after I / then I” as prompts.

This is a powerful way to start using logic to examine your habits and strengthen your willpower.

With focused (loving!) attention on the next right thing to do now in service to creating the desired future, logic gives love the structure to properly flourish.

Lyricism. 🎼

Lyricism is where love and logic meet.

That’s sort of how poetry works.

Haiku’s are composed of three lines with a 5-7-5 syllable count that don’t have to rhyme.

Or you could rhyme with an AB AB structure, where the 1st and 3rd lines rhyme, as well as the 2nd and 4th.

These logically reasoned patterns are vehicles for creative and emotional expression.

The structure serves as a creative constraint.

I’ve been having some fun experimenting with AI tools like ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing, so while editing this for publishing I decided to open up Bing in the sidebar of the Microsoft Edge browser to see what it would write when prompted about this topic:

As a writer it has been fun to experiment and imagine the negative implications as well as the creative possibility of AI language models.

But would you have preferred to read a poem that's 100% from me?

Do these tools as a medium for the arts dull the message even if it might not have been created if it wasn't I who prompted it?

🤔 We can continue that chat in the comments or in a Note.

To wrap this Letter to Leadership, L is about living life with love and logic in harmony with each other. When we’re leading lyricism, our actions match our words and our hearts and minds align. The strongest self is playing the ultimate game at the highest level.