I suspect the number/ratio of “key” personnel is highly variable, and in companies that aren’t sole-founder-plus-employees, there is a somewhat fractal tree of cultural reinforcement, where as long as there’s a sufficient preponderance of alignment at the level below the key person, the organization can survive the loss.
But that’s different from your topic—you want to know how to turn fraught high-stakes topics into simpler more legible discussions. I’m not sure that’s possible—the reason they’re fraught is the SAME as the reason it’s important to get it right. They’re high-stakes because they matter. And they matter because it affects a lot of different dimensions of the operation and one’s life, and those dimensions are entangled with each other BECAUSE of how valuable the relationship is to each side.
I suspect the number/ratio of “key” personnel is highly variable, and in companies that aren’t sole-founder-plus-employees, there is a somewhat fractal tree of cultural reinforcement, where as long as there’s a sufficient preponderance of alignment at the level below the key person, the organization can survive the loss.
But that’s different from your topic—you want to know how to turn fraught high-stakes topics into simpler more legible discussions. I’m not sure that’s possible—the reason they’re fraught is the SAME as the reason it’s important to get it right. They’re high-stakes because they matter. And they matter because it affects a lot of different dimensions of the operation and one’s life, and those dimensions are entangled with each other BECAUSE of how valuable the relationship is to each side.