Thread by @swardley

X : Any advice on leadership skills?
Me : Gosh, that's a broad topic. Can you narrow down what you're after?
X : Core skills.
Me : Oh. Well the most important skill is experience.
X : Of management?
Me : No. Of the space you're operating in.
X : How do you mean?

Me : If you're going to lead an accountancy firm, then you'll need to have accountancy background. A hospital then you need to be a nurse / doctor. The army then a soldier. An engineering firm then an engineer and on and on.
X : What about transferable leadership skills?

Me : Ah, the idea that you don't need experience of the field. You just need leadership skills?
X : Yes.
Me : That's nonsense spread by management consultants etc in order to give themselves jobs. You need to have direct experience of a field.

X : There are lots of tech companies not run by technologists.
Me : That's true. But they're mostly falling off a cliff at this moment. Long lived engineering companies that aren't run by engineers ... dream on. That's like armies run by salespeople, it's not going to end well.

X : What about hospital administrators?
Me : People that do admin in hospitals?
X : They run hospitals.
Me : I assume they're former doctors / nurses.
X : Not necessarily.
Me : You're having a laugh? You've been employing too many management consultants.

X : You get professional football team managers.
Me : I can't think of any that weren't former players at some level. It's a special type of opium that makes you believe you can lead a space that you have no experience in ... and the ego needed? That should disqualify you.

X : What about Wardley mapping?
Me : and?
X : A necessity for leadership?
Me : Only if situational awareness matters and even then the first thing you learn from maps is only those with experience of a space can map it. You can't ask someone to map Paris who has never been there.

X : What if someone with experience builds the map?
Me : Well, you show them gameplay, organisational structure and anticipation around it. But you'll still need someone with experience of a field to lead it. There is no shortcut, you need to deeply understand what creates value.

X : Investment?
Me : Hmmm ... I assume you mean investors are wealth generators?
X : Yes
Me : Well, they create wealth for themselves but that's simply an artefact of the system. The value is created by people who do the actual work. In hospitals that's doctors and nurses.

X : I disagree.
Me : Ok. Take a hospital. Leave all the non medical qualified admin and investors in place. Remove all the doctors and nurses. See what happens. I promise you, not a lot of value will be created.
X : But administration is important.
Me : Sure, but it's support ...

... and if you're going to have someone lead that space, they better have medical experience. This is madness, you are literally arguing that a general needs no military experience.
X : Well, do they?
Me : Ok, this is to surreal even for me.

X : What about politicians?
Me : They just need to be representative of the people, the only experience you need is ... being a person, part of that society.
X : What if a doctor gets elected and ends up in charge of the MOD?
Me : Well, that's why we have generals.

... the day some politician starts trying to replace generals with a bunch of management consultants to do "leadership" is the day when you start along the path of losing your country.

X : What about sales?
Me : What about it?
X : That creates values.
Me : No, it's a support service. It sells the stuff of value that others create. You can survive without sales (possibly not very well) but you can't survive without people doing the work that creates value.

X : I disagree.
Me : Well, you're having a laugh then. Take a company, fire everyone who builds or creates anything and just fill it with salespeople with nothing to sell. I promise you, you're not going to see a lot of value generation. Some expensive lunches ... maybe.

X : So you don't think sales is important?
Me : Of course I think it's important but in most cases it's a support service. It's not what creates the value and if you're going to lead a field then you need to deeply understand the space that creates value.