Daniel Willson
Daniel Willson
My Approach

My Approach

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Here’s how I think about leading teams and building new ideas.

My toolkit for building stuff

I’m a strategy and ops guy, though I’m originally an engineer by training. I attended UVA and got a degree in computer science, but quickly discovered I loved talking to people way too much to purely be coding all day. 😂 Operations, chief-of-staff, and/or product roles are my jam, as they allow me to use my maker/builder-mindset to solve people- and customer-centric problems.

I think it’s really fun to jump from thinking through high-level strategy problems to figuring out how to prototype, test, and execute on those ideas that very day. That means my usual toolkit involves software that lets me prototype ideas quickly and build consensus across teams.

I practically live in Airtable, Zapier, Slack, and Notion for that reason. (This very website is built on Notion and hosted with Super.) I’ve found that no- and low-code tools like these are friendlier and easier places to build things, especially when working cross-functionally. No one should waste time debugging code when you’re just trying to get validation on an idea.

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My good friend Andy Page and I teach hundreds of entrepreneurship students at UVA each year about how they can prototype their ideas. Here are some of our favorite tools that we share with them.

My approach to leadership

I thoroughly enjoy helping team members reach their potential and guiding a team toward a goal. I’ve had the opportunity to lead a lot of people in a lot of different types of teams:

  • hundreds of volunteers for a nonprofit festival and conference
  • dozens of part-time instructors and teaching assistants
  • several full-time direct reports
  • a nonprofit board of directors
  • dozens of part-time delivery drivers across the country

I’ve learned a lot along the way.

I’ll share a few key guiding principles I’ve picked up on that shape my leadership style today:

  1. If people are doing the wrong thing, usually systems are making it hard to do the right thing. The default should always be to build better systems and improve communication before placing blame.
  2. The best teams (and systems) are not dependent on a single person. One of the funny key signs of a team working well is that anyone within it, including the leader, can go on vacation and nothing immediately breaks.
  3. Direct reports should be taught over time to think like their managers do. This naturally prepares everyone to step up to a more senior role. Plus, it makes the whole team more autonomous.
  4. Whenever possible, decisions should be made where the information is. Decisions from the top-down not only can break trust and buy-in, they often completely miss the nuance and/or localized knowledge that on-the-ground teams have.
  5. Constantly and consistently surfacing the why is one of the most important things a leader can do. It gives teams purpose, clarifies priorities, and builds trust.
  6. Strategic leadership is a tricky balance of pushing boundaries and listening to where your team wants to go. But as long as your team understands the why, you can maintain trust and buy-in, even when you have to make tough decisions that many or most disagree with.
  7. Invest in hungry, high-potential people and they’ll grow with you and your organization.

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Read more here about a few of the projects, companies, and communities I’ve built.

I occasionally consult with companies who are looking for help/guidance on testing out a new idea, building out a recruiting pipeline, or improving an existing process/system. If that’s of interest to you…

Get in touch!