In an airport today I saw an ad for the second collected notes on the Chinese system of government by Xi Jinping. I appreciate there is a purpose to this kind of writing beyond sharing actual principles of governance, but the idea of a sitting leader describing their governing principles is an interesting one.
In much of the west you see books written for or during campaigns, laying out how the candidate intends to do the job. It’s also pretty common, particularly among business leaders, to write about how they handled certain challenges. The idea of sharing thinking while actually in the role seems rarer.
At dinner last night, we discussed an executive who had a “user’s manual”, a guide on how to work with them effectively, and how they did things. This is somewhat in the same vein - share more of your thinking than you otherwise would.
Understanding how a leader or otherwise highly influential person approaches things does open the door for challenges and maybe even exploitation, but there is a big potential positive in both exposing ideas to criticism and giving a framework for others to operate in.