I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
— Percy Shelley, “Ozymandias”
I first read this poem in the ninth grade. Even knowing very little of ancient history, the stark imagery of a broken, desolate statue in the desert left a powerful impression on me. What happened to the “works” of Ozymandias that nothing but sand remained? How long does it take for an empire not only to collapse, but to practically disappear?
Also - what does that mean for the legacy of an average person?
Image generated by DALL-E
Fast forward a decade and I was the teacher in the South Bronx, guiding a group of my own ninth graders through their interpretation of history. Teaching World History was my first real professional assignment, and presented a paradox: while imparting the vastness of centuries and millennia to my young students, I faced the ceaseless pressure to make every minute count.
Teaching history taught me about leadership. I learned how to prioritize my own time, how to lead others to prioritize their own time, and what kinds of actions led to lasting impact.
I also learned that there are no leaders without followers, that followership is a form of leadership, and the classroom can be the microcosm of many leadership scenarios.
My high school classroom is the birthplace of what I now call Timeless Leadership.
What is Timeless Leadership?
The world of work first exposed me to the issues of time for leaders - I felt it myself, and I saw it all around me. I deeply wished to make a direct and lasting impact on the lives of my students through education, but I also recognized the giant structural issues that could constrain or utterly sabotage their life prospects. Could I somehow tackle both?
Meanwhile, I was growing up, working to build a financial foundation, a family, a community, and a satisfying career. Increasingly as I wore different leadership hats and worked with and learned from other leaders, I continuously saw two related themes pop up:
Problem: Leaders don’t feel they have enough time - for themselves, for their organizations, or for the causes they care about. How can leaders master time in each of theses spheres of their lives?
Solution: As teaching is the art of collective influence and mobilization, it contains secrets for leaders who are holding too much themselves. The idea of doing less, but teaching more - points the way to cracking the code of timelessness.
Could these insights be the basis of something important? What could I do with them besides share them in conversation or use them in my private practice?
Conceiving a Timeless Leadership newsletter
Fast forward again, now to 2021. I’m visiting my parents in New York. While sifting through old boxes of papers and books, I uncover vast artifacts of my early writing.
Literal stacks of journals, short stories, poems, research reports, and critical analyses.
Despite a long-standing habit and love of writing, a career pivot to the corporate world and fatherhood had closed the spigot on my words flowing to the page.
How is it with so much more experience and perspective, I had let my writing dry up?
The irony was that more than ever, I was coming to appreciate the value of writing while working and living. Whether it was Dan, my friend and collaborator at work, who repeated the mantra “work out loud”, or Ibrahim, a mentor who promoted the refrain that “writing is thinking”, I had constant reminders that writing and sharing about my work had clear and sometimes serendipitous benefits.
So I opened a Substack account… but let it lay dormant for a couple of years.
We live in a sea of content sources, perspectives, and information.
One thing I’m deeply committed to is cutting down on noise.
The last thing I wanted to do was add more.
What was missing? What could I uniquely add?
Why now?
Part of starting now is my realization that I’m ready for this. In preparation to start this project, over the past few years I’ve:
Delivered enablement for hundreds of leaders
Reflected deeply on my own journey as a leader and follower
Joined communities of practice and upskilled as a talent development professional
Scoured the literature on leadership itself, and assessed gaps in the theory
Interviewed leaders about the challenges they face in managing time
Prototyped and tested a framework for bridging leadership theory & practice
Researched and tested ways to leverage “content” for impact
With a blueprint for something valuable, it’s time to build and share it.
But there’s something more important than that:
Our moment in history gives the real why.
Whether we’re looking at politics or business, technology or culture, the environment or the economy, human civilization is at a pivotal crossroads. With over 8 billion people on the planet and unprecedented connectedness we have an opportunity and an need to communicate and collaborate much better than we are today.
If we can find a way to do this, decades from now we’ll look back on this moment and say “we turned a corner.”
Timeless Leadership is a space where we can explore both the mindsets and actions needed to transform leadership and culture more broadly. It is a space that is at once practical and grounded, but also consistently tied to the big picture.
We will solve specific problems in our lives and our businesses. We will also build a movement where those small actions add up to something greater and lasting.
My Promises to You
I feel honored to have you as a reader and possible conversation partner or even collaborator. For this reason, I’ll always be honest about my goals and process - and act on principles of consistency and value.
In addition, these are three concrete commitments you can count on:
Focus “Season 1” on weekly insights drawn from the method’s origins: I will publish Timeless Leadership in seasons. From now through Feb 27th, you will get one issue each week on Tuesdays at 2pm PT. The thematic focus for Season 1 is the Origins of the Timeless Leadership method. We will cover influential leadership books, pivotal career moments, and a few powerful case studies.
Readability & usability: Each issue will take <10 minutes to read. I will edit and proof-read before sending. Every issue with include action steps.
Openness to feedback: I’m not just open to feedback - I crave it. My goals are continuous improvement and making Timeless Leadership something that you feel you can co-own and take with you.
My asks of you
If you’ve read this far, I have three asks of you:
If you haven’t yet, please subscribe! The button is just below.
Please forward this to one person that you think would appreciate these ideas.
Send me one piece of feedback. What’s one way you’ve struggled with time as a leader? What’s something you want out of this newsletter? Leave a comment or message me privately. I’m excited to hear from you.
Until next week…
Time speeds on, and before you know it another week will have gone by.
It can be easy to forget, but centuries are made of weeks. Weeks are made of seconds.
Stone dissolves to sand. The sand of time slips through our fingers.
The work we do today and tomorrow will soon be forgotten.
Neither you nor I will ever be the king of kings…
But together we can build an empire of useful ideas to last for ages.
Excited for what's to come, Joe!