Welcome to Verstreuen - meaning “to scatter” - where I unpack the ideas I’ve collected this week in my 🗃️ Zettelkasten, “note box,” personal knowledge management system. Here, I’ll share the highlights, insights, and stories I find interesting - and think you will too!

_{Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more}

🗃️ This Week’s Highlights

This week's notes come from 11 new additions to the Zettelkasten - here’s the three that stood out most to share with you:

🟨 Shared leadership breaks without structure

🟦 Your risk mindset isn’t rational - it’s cultural

🟥 Even the best fail when the problem is miscategorized

A few weeks ago, I joined a "flat" team. No titles, no hierarchy. Everyone was empowered. Everyone had a voice.

But three weeks in and nothing was moving.

We had meetings. We had opinions. Yet had zero direction.
What we didn’t have was clarity, structure, or anyone driving forward.

We weren’t stuck for lack of effort. We were stuck for lack of structure. So I changed the rules: "What if we split the document review work, summarize key points asynchronously, and let each person scan summaries instead of rereading all 200+ files?"

Suddenly: progress.

When looking at books this week, I came across When Everyone Leads by Heifetz and Linsky, which outlined what I had just done:

Leadership is the act of closing the gap between where we are and where we need to be.

It has nothing to do with titles.

In our case:

• Gap: Flailing doc review

• Act: Redistributed work with clarity

• Result: Team-wide momentum

Teams aren’t broken by default. But shared leadership without shared structure is like a baton passed between runners who can’t run in the same direction.

Don’t wait to be handed the baton. Pick it up.

—🗃️—

I never realized just how differently each person relates to risk - and these differences show up everywhere: in teams, companies, and decisions.

Some of us sprint into risk. Others hedge, build walls, and slow down.
Those aren’t just personal styles - they’re cultural archetypes:

🌊 The River Mindset
(Startup founders, traders, early adopters)

River people thrive on speed, uncertainty, and high stakes. They treat failure as learning and chase opportunity through motion.

• Belief: Uncertainty holds opportunity

• Values:

  • Speed over certainty

  • Failure as data

  • Risk as relevance

In the River, standing still is riskier than moving fast.

🏘️ The Village Mindset
(Governments, regulators, institutions)

Village people manage risk through structure and stability. They prioritize safety, consistency, and long-term trust.

• Belief: Stability enables progress

• Values:

  • Rigor over rush

  • Structure over spontaneity

  • Safety over speed

The Village embraces change - cautiously, carefully, and equitably.

Bridging the Ideologic Divide

Whether launching a product or making a decision, recognize the mindset at play,
Are we chasing the current - or protecting what’s already been built?
Sometimes, collaboration needs a boat. Sometimes, a translator.

Risk speaks many dialects. Learn to translate.

—🗃️—

I’ve learned the hard way that not all problems can be fixed with a checklist or a clever tool. Some challenges don’t live in project plans - they live in beliefs, roles, relationships. They’re not technical. They’re adaptive. And they don’t get solved. They get outgrown.

A while back, I hit a wall with a personal project I deeply cared about. I had the system. I had the deadlines. I even had good feedback. But every time I sat down to work on it, I felt friction - hesitation, resistance, doubt. So I tried optimizing: better tools, tighter timelines, more structure. None of it worked.

Eventually, I realized the real problem wasn’t the project. It was me. The identity I was working from - what I thought the project should be, what I thought I needed to be - was outdated. I didn’t need a new strategy. I needed to let go of who I was when I started the thing and grow into who I needed to be to finish it.

The mistake I made was treating an adaptive challenge like a technical one. I optimized what I should’ve questioned. Automated what needed reflection. Tried to fix what I hadn’t even faced. And when nothing worked, I thought I’d failed - when really, I’d just misdiagnosed the kind of work required.

Now, when I feel that same friction, I try to pause and ask: What kind of work does this moment really call for? Because when it’s adaptive, no strategy beats the courage to grow and let the work become what it was meant to be.

—🗃️—

Closing Thoughts

The work the situation demands isn’t always the work we want to do - or even recognize.
But it’s the only kind that moves things forward.

Some teams stall. Some plans collapse. Some strategies just don’t land.
Not because they’re bad - but because they’re misaligned with the problem at hand.

This week’s ideas had a common thread: we often bring the wrong kind of effort to the table.

• A flat team floundered - not for lack of talent, but because no one owned the structure.

• A disagreement over risk wasn’t about right vs. wrong - it was a clash of cultures.

• A stalled initiative wasn’t broken - it was trying to fix what needed to evolve.

Each case had a smart solution - and each one failed until someone reframed the real challenge.

Because if you're solving the wrong problem,
even your best effort will just dig the wrong hole deeper.

So don’t just ask, What should I do? Ask: What kind of work is this? And who does it ask me to become?

That’s the work the situation demands.

Thanks for reading Verstreuen! 👋 Until next week -GH