I didn’t set out to lead.
I set out to solve problems.
But solving problems in a messy system slowly turned me into “the manager.”
Most people imagine management as a promotion. A title. A decision someone makes on purpose.
Mine happened sideways.
At one point, while I was working through a project, I jokingly broke down the “team.”
There was the designer.
The writer.
The systems thinker.
The emotional buffer.
The person tracking dependencies.
And then there was the intern.
The intern was the one doing the direct tasks. Pull this file. Fix that line. Run this check. Try this change.
The joke, of course, was that all of those roles were me.
Except the intern.
That was the AI.
There was this one design issue that should have been simple.
Instead, it turned into a spiral.
We kept trying to fix it with a global solution. Change the base. Adjust the rule. Tweak the structure so everything would just behave correctly everywhere.
Each change made sense in isolation.
Together? They started stacking.
One fix introduced a side effect. That side effect needed another adjustment. That adjustment nudged something else out of alignment. Eventually we weren’t improving the system anymore — we were compounding errors.
And the worst part?
Some of what we broke had been working perfectly before we “improved” it.
By the end of that session, I wasn’t thoughtful or reflective. I was angry. Frustrated. Questioning whether the entire task had ever been worth the effort.
I left the project frustrated and went to sleep.
When I woke up, I went to my day job, still carrying that low-grade mental irritation you get when something feels wrong but you can’t yet name why.
Somewhere in a quiet moment, I pulled up the “intern” again.
“I’m still not happy,” I said. “But I had a thought.”
What if I want to do something later that collides with all these global changes we just made?
In my mind, the overall system was fine. That’s why it had worked before we started “fixing” it. The problem wasn’t the structure — it was the one new thing we were trying to add.
So why were we trying to redesign the whole building to hang one picture?
Why couldn’t we just make local changes to the item we were adding?
Shouldn’t there be a way to do that without going nuclear?
That’s when I made a rule I didn’t know I’d been missing:
If something can be handled locally, don’t touch the global.
That was the moment I realized the mistake hadn’t just been technical.
It was managerial.
I had been thinking like someone responsible for the entire system — but without respecting the boundaries of intervention. I saw the connections, but I overreached. I assumed that because I could change the foundation, I should.
Leadership isn’t just about seeing the big picture.
It’s about knowing when to leave it alone.
When I got home, I rolled everything back to the last known good state.
Clean slate. No layered fixes. No accumulated “improvements.”
Then I worked forward again — but this time with the rule in place.
Try local first. See if it works.
Instead of touching the foundation, I focused only on the piece I was adding. The changes were more technical. Less “turn-key.” I had to understand the mechanics a little better instead of relying on sweeping adjustments.
But when it worked, it worked the way good engineering does.
Nothing groaned. Nothing shifted out of alignment. The new piece didn’t stress the frame, it just joined the structure like it had always belonged there.
I’m not afraid of a bit of technical. Learning isn’t something I avoid.
So instead of feeling drained, I felt satisfied.
Not because I “fixed it,” but because I fixed it without shaking the rest of the building.
After that fix, I realized something.
I hadn’t just been directing tasks.
I had been managing the creative department, the architecture, the wild intern, and myself.
Not just keeping things in motion, but putting the right pieces in the right places so the end result didn’t feel lucky — it felt inevitable.
That’s different from being “in charge.”
It’s closer to being responsible for the shape of the work.
For how ideas enter the system.
How changes ripple.
How frustration gets translated instead of multiplied.
And sometimes, for knowing when to stop touching the foundation.
I didn’t set out to lead.
I set out to solve problems.
But somewhere between noticing the patterns, buffering the friction, learning when not to touch the foundation, and keeping the wild intern pointed in a useful direction, the role changed.
I wasn’t just doing work anymore.
I was holding the shape of the work.
Making decisions that made the outcome feel inevitable instead of accidental. Protecting the structure while still letting new things join it. Managing the creative, the technical, the emotional, and the limits of my own reach.
That’s not the version of management you see on org charts.
But it’s the one I seem to keep becoming.
Accidentally.
Consistently.
And now, at least, on purpose.
I spent time in the Army as a platoon sergeant.
I learned leadership there, of course. Structure. Responsibility. How to make decisions when people are depending on you.
But it wasn’t this kind.
This understanding, about scope, about when not to touch the foundation, about how small changes can protect a system better than sweeping ones, came later.
And sometimes I think, if I’d known this version of leadership back then, I would have been better for that platoon.
Not stricter.
Not louder.
Just more aware of how much of leadership is knowing where your influence should stop, not just where it can reach.