In the early 1980s, Deng Xiaoping inherited a China that had just emerged from the Cultural Revolution. Internally, there was the enormous legacy and inertia left by Mao Zedong. Externally, the entire Western world was watching to see what he'd do next. He had no blueprint, no precedent to follow. What he said was: "Cross the river by feeling the stones."
Not because he didn't want to run — but because the only way to know what the riverbed looks like is to step in.
I've only read fragments of Deng Xiaoping's biography. I learned his story more deeply late last year, watching a YouTube video of Chai Jing's commentary on Deng's interview with the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci. When she asked him, "How do you evaluate Mao Zedong?" — to such a razor-sharp question, his final response was silence. I keep coming back to that phrase lately.
Four years of business administration in college. "Leadership" in the textbooks looked very clean. Peter Drucker said, "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things" — what a beautiful, precise line. Management is about figuring out how to do things correctly; leadership is about figuring out which things are correct to do. Herzberg's two-factor theory taught me that salary and office environment can only prevent dissatisfaction — what truly drives people is a sense of achievement, responsibility, recognition. Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory says people need autonomy, competence, and belonging. Charismatic leadership, servant leadership, transformational leadership, transactional leadership — each came with its own framework and quadrant. Memorize them and you could draw a neat two-by-two matrix.
That's how I was taught, along with every other business school student. Management was a discipline of induction — as if reading enough, analyzing deeply enough, would mean that one day when you finally sit in that chair, you'd naturally know what to do.
A naive thought. And management is a practical discipline.
My first real job was doing marketing at a Hong Kong-founded startup. I started as an intern, then converted to contract. I reported directly to the marketing lead — the company's first and only marketing hire. Before I joined, he was a one-man operation, building the case for marketing's value from scratch inside a sales-driven B2B company.
I remember he had weekly check-ins with the big boss. Every time, he prepared his slides carefully — what to cover, what to say, how to frame the numbers. I was just the junior sitting next to him, vaguely sensing that he carried a lot. Upward, he had to manage the boss's expectations. Inward, he had to prop up the shape of a department. Downward, he still had to give me enough room to grow.
I didn't know that was called "managing up" back then. I just thought: he works so hard.
But I saw one thing from him: a small-team lead can do far more than their title should require. He was operating at roughly 1.5x — not because he wanted to show off, but because if he didn't do it, nobody would.
My second job, my direct manager was also the company's CEO. She had led teams at large companies and at startups — a very senior mentor. The density of what I learned under her was extremely high.
But what I'll never forget was a particular month when my state was terrible.
I was in London at the time. My output couldn't keep up with the pace at all. I was like a frozen computer — the screen still on, but no programs running. She didn't wait. She pulled me into a call and laid into me, hard. Not the kind of criticism that carries malice — but the kind that says, "I can see something's wrong with you, and I'm not going to pretend I don't."
That was when I truly understood what a leader should look like when a team member is in dysfunction — not avoidance, not waiting for them to fix themselves, but confronting it directly, putting the problem on the table, and figuring it out together.
Tough, but not cold. Direct, but premised on "I care about you."
Then, fast-forward to now.
I'm at a startup, leading an intern, reporting directly to the CEO. One day, I suddenly realized something almost absurd — I had become that role.
The person who prepares the slides and reviews progress with the boss. The person who, when things go wrong on the team, has to decide how much force and what approach to use. The person who absorbs all the pressure externally and makes things clear internally.
I had become the two managers I once watched from the sidelines.
But becoming them, and actually doing what they did — those are two entirely different things.
Some things happened recently that forced me to confront that gap.
The details don't matter. What matters is: when someone under me made a mistake, I had to make a rapid series of decisions — how to respond externally, how to communicate internally, how deep to go when holding them accountable, how to patch the process. Then, after all that, I had to turn around and report to the boss, speak in facts, own my side of the responsibility first, then present the improvement plan.
Bear the responsibility outward. Educate inward.
Those eight characters sound light in Chinese. But in practice, every one of them has weight. "Bear" means not letting your team member face the external fire, even if they're the one who lit it — intentional or not, it's the leader's failure. You bear it so the team can keep functioning. "Educate" means making the problem thoroughly clear, pointing out the pattern without emotion — not just chewing someone out and moving on. Accountability is about helping them see the thinking habits behind their actions, then asking: what would you do differently next time?
During the one-on-one, I told him:
"You can be the person who caused the problem and also the person who actively participates in fixing it. Your position and your attitude — those two things don't conflict."
After I said it, I realized that line was also for myself. As a manager, I had my own blind spots too — the last time something similar happened, I communicated, but I didn't trace it to the root. I didn't help the team build the systems it needed.
"Blaming the system is easy. But admitting you messed up and figuring out where the problem actually lies — that's the hard part."
I said that to him. I said it to myself too. Competence and accountability are two different things — that's a line I've been turning over in my mind since that conversation.
I'm not sure if I'm doing well. Am I at least closing in on the silhouettes of the people who once led me?
Textbooks never taught any of this.
Never taught me that when I hear bad news on the other end of a phone call, my stomach clenches first, and only then does my brain start spinning. Never taught me to hold back my own emotions during accountability, because my anger solves nothing — but my composure can. Never taught me that "managing up" isn't just regular reporting — it's letting the boss know where I am, where I'm stuck, and where I'm headed before they even ask.
And they certainly never taught the hardest question of all: when I'm still an executor — eighty percent of my working hours spent doing — how do I simultaneously pull my head out to think about direction, manage relationships, and build systems?
I keep wondering if the problem is that I spend too much time executing. But thinking harder, probably not. Drucker's line floats back up — management is doing things right, leadership is doing the right things — I've probably been managing this whole time, without learning how to lead. The closer answer is that I still haven't separated "what matters" from "what's just busy." So I keep doing a lot of scattered, zero-synergy tasks — like puzzle pieces strewn across the floor, every piece moving, but nobody looking at the picture on the box.
From the two managers who once led me, I absorbed a great deal. One taught me the courage to manage down — see a problem, say it, don't wait. The other taught me the discipline to manage up — be prepared before you walk in, always think one step ahead of the boss.
But a role model is only ever a reference.
They are their own shape. I have to grow into mine. In a company so flat it barely has hierarchy, managing up, down, and sideways all at once — nobody can teach me that. Drucker's golden line can't capture the tone in that phone call. Herzberg's theory can't frame those few seconds I spent torn between accountability and protection.
So — cross the river by feeling the stones.
Deng Xiaoping faced the transformation of an entire nation. I'm facing nothing more than the daily operations of a small team. But the river is the same in essence — if I don't step in, I'll never know where the next stone is. And every step I plant firmly becomes something that belongs only to me.
Textbooks won't teach me this. Only the river will.