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Hi, everybody. It is Alex. Let me ask you something.
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Do you know Mike?
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You know, the best engineer on the team promoted to
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lead and suddenly drowning? Nobody trained him to manage others.
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Nobody trained you either. This is exactly why I wrote
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From Code to People, the CQ leadership method that transforms
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technical experts into leaders teams actually want to work for.
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It's not another leadership theory book. It is the practical
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system that I use with tech leaders every single day.
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Built on three main tools that you can start using
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right away. Process communication model, PCM, three-level contracting, and the
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will of conflict. Real frameworks for real conversations with real
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engineers like Mike. If you're a technical expert who got
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promoted into people management and nobody handed you an app,
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this book, Grab it at from code2people.
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Lemonskills. com. That's from code2people.
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Lemonskills. com.
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Welcome to the Lemon Tech Leadership Podcast. My name is
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Aleksandra Lemanska. I'm a former violinist turned management engineer turned
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organizational psychologist, speaker and PCM leadership mentor and facilitator. In
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this space, everyone is invited to the table where we
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have real eye-opening conversations about tech leadership. Two keywords, utility
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and real-life implementation. Knowledge, tools, frameworks, ways of working, do's
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and don'ts, taken from my personal experiences as a leader
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and the experiences of others, is what you are going
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to get from every single episode. This is the Lemon
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Tech Leadership Podcast.
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Okay, so let's go. and take some action.
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Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Leman
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Tech Leadership Podcast. This is Alex, and I would love
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to invite you to have another AI discussion because we
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don't have enough of them, right? Today, I would love
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to have a conversation about value of AI versus value
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of people. Because this is a discussion that a lot
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of people have right now. And I would love for
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us to have this discussion on the show. And before
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we go into the subject, I would love to invite
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you to something connected to people, actually. So, From Code
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to People is my book. And if you don't have
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a copy yet, just grab it.
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This is an amazing book. And I am super proud
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of it.
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And I'm not saying it because it's mine, but because
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I have so much good feedback from engineering leaders, CTOs,
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VPs of different... pieces of technology that's the leads. That's,
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this is something that every single tech leader should read
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every single leader. Um, and overall, but, I used a
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lot of tech examples in there. So this is, this
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is for tech people explicitly.
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So go grab it. It's all over Amazon, all around
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the globe.
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So from code to people, it's also from cold to
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people to that lemma skills.com.
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So go grab your copy.
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There's ebook. There is, um, audio book. There is, uh,
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There is a paper copy if you want to have
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it in your hand.
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So go and check it out. So AI conversation. We
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are having it all the time.
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For about two years now or so, we are talking
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about different tools, different pieces of technology, etc.
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And I think.
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And this is not my thoughts only, but this is
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from what I see, that a lot of leaders are
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quietly feeling, and not many are saying it out loud,
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that companies right now are overvaluing AI and undervaluing their people.
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Not AI itself. I'm not anti-tool. I'm using AI all
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the time. And I think you know it if you
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listened to the show before. What I mean is the
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imbalance in where the attention, the budget, and the genuine
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curiosity are going. And I see training budgets frozen while
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tooling budgets growing without much security.
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Load full transcript
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This is interesting.
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And I see leaders who can describe their AI roadmap
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in detail and cannot describe their people development plan at all.
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And this gap is today's episode. Here's the pattern that
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I keep seeing in organizations of very different sizes and sectors.
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And I wanted to share it with you today. A
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new tool, AI tool, gets adopted with real energy. Our
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load plan, training sessions, leadership attention. Meanwhile, the manager development
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program that was supposed to launch this year quietly slips. Again,
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because there's always something more urgent and nobody frames the
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slip as a real decision, it just.
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Happens by default.
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And the uncomfortable truth is that investing in a tool
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is easier than investing in a person. A tool has
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a clear price tag, a clear rollout timeline, a clear demo,
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and developing people is slower. messier and harder to measure
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not impossible but harder to measure and the return shows
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up gradually rather in a single number in a slide
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so under time pressure the easier investment quietly wins over
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and over again even when everyone will agree if asked
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directly that people are the actual asset and This shows
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up downstream as a specific kind of quiet dysfunction. Teams
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with excellent tools and underdeveloped leaders. Fast systems run by
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people who are never actually taught how to meet them well.
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High performance on paper and high attrition underneath. And I
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know it can be boring, especially for those of you
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who are listening episode after episode, but I want to
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very much use the will of conflict here because this
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almost always gets discussed as a budget or efficiency question,
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the structure, the conflict of structure, when it's actually underneath
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the value of conflict, the conflict of values. So the
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real question isn't, what is the ROI of this training
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versus the tool? It is, do we actually believe people
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development is a genuine priority? Or do we just say
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that while our actual spending says something else? Most organizations
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that I see and observe from the inside or from
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the outside never ever had this conversation directly. They've just
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let the budget answer it by default and just put
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the budget freeze on Include four is we don't have money.
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We need to cut somewhere. And this is exactly, again, boring,
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but you don't need more knowledge.
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You need more repetition.
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So contracting matters, but it matters at the organizational level,
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not just an individual one. Because the status contract with
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employees is often something like we invest in your growth.
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The real lift contract and visible in where the money
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and attention actually go can be something closer to we
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invest in tools that make you more productive and hope
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your growth happens on its own. Nobody signs up for that.
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The second, contracts on purpose. It's just accumulates from 100
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small budget decisions, each one individual responsible for the outcome.
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So if you're a.
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Leader in a dynamic environment like that, even if you
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don't control the whole budget, you can still make this
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explicit inside of your own team. Name what you're actually
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investing in this quarter, tools or people or both, and
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be honest with your team about the real balance instead
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of letting the gap between values and actual spending go unnamed.
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And people just have this.
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This thought or this feeling.
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That, hey, they're putting all the money in the tools
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or integration or something, and we don't get raises of
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our salaries.
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So this is the same case. People don't understand it.
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We know that there is a different budget line, but
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for people, money is money. At the end of the day,
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the whole budget is just one big spreadsheet. So we
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just need to be smarter.
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About it.
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I'm not saying to not invest in AI, in tech,
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in overall at all, because this is not what I'm saying.
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I'm saying to find balance between those two. Investing and
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improving your tech stock and investing in people and if
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you're cutting budgets, be smart about it and be equal
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about it. I know that some cuts are easier and
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some cuts are harder, quote unquote, but it is because
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we've always done it that way. We never thought about
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the real risk of cutting from this or that part
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of the spreadsheet. And it has real consequences in real
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life of real people.
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So, do the audit.
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Look at your last two quarters of spending and attention.
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Not just budget lines. Not just items in your budget.
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Your own calendar too. See what it tells you. Most
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leaders are surprised by the ratio of spending time on
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on those things. Second thing that we can do is
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actually name the gap out loud with your own team
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or your own leadership, rather than letting it sit as
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an unspoken discomfort. It might go with something like, I
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think we've been having, investing really heavily in tools and
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politely in people development. And I want to change that
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ratio this quarter. It is genuinely useful, specific sentence to
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say in the leadership page. And number three, protect one
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concrete people investment on your own calendar this quarter. A
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real mentoring block, a skills development budget line, or a
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structured feedback process. Something that survives the next round of
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more urgent pressure because you've made it a stated commitment,
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not just a good intention. Because the calendar is for you,
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not you for the calendar. So the question is who
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has control over whom. So do the audit, say it
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out loud and plan and do not negotiate with yourself.
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And we are negotiating with ourselves all the time.
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So don't do it.
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Okay.
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This is what we can do here. And this is it.
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This is it for this episode because tools can make people,
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good people, faster. They cannot make undeveloped people good. So
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if you only invest in one side of the equation,
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you're building on a foundation that isn't actually there. So
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this is why I've recorded this episode, just to create another,
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to propose you to another wake-up call.
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So This is it. This is it.
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And if you are more interested in more, if you
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are super open to do things smarter, to not waste
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any more time, just grab a book. From Code to People,
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all over the internet, all over Amazon. Because in the book,
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there is a blueprint that you can actually use later.
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So use it because it's written already. You don't need
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to look at somewhere else.
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Everything is one place. So go grab it. Be smarter.
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Be better as a leader.
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Until next time, lead without burnout. I'll see you very
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soon in the next episode of the Lemon Tech Leadership Podcast.
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Bye, everybody.