About

Origins

I’ve developed the concept of Timeless Leadership over two decades of studying and practicing leadership in schools, communities, startups, scale-ups, and politics. What I found again and again is that leaders are in a battle with time, struggling and sometimes succeeding in answering these three questions:

Leading myself

How do I prioritize my own time?

Leading within organizations

How do I build and use systems that help teams make the best use of their time?

Leading outside of organizations

How can I influence movements of people to do work that lasts beyond our time?

I searched long and hard for the answers for how everyday people can truly lead – and this project is formalizing that search into a life-long endeavor. Answers to all these questions may be accessible by reading widely and deeply, but practicing leaders have nowhere to go to succinctly find answers to all three – and that’s why we’re here.

-Joe Ballou, November 2024

Mission

The mission of Timeless Leader is to empower everyday leaders to live with master their time, live with courage, and leave a 100+ year legacy of compassion through their teachings.

The Timeless Leader Oath

An important component of Timeless Leadership is a commitment to adhering to a set of principles that can produce the desired outcomes. This oath will evolve over time, but as a starting point, a few commitments include:

I will not try to save the world by myself. I understand progress is a joint effort.
I will pursue only as much power as I need to achieve my mission, and nothing more.
I will not sacrifice my health, my family, my workers, or my community in the service of a selfish or ego-driven goal.
I will dedicate more time to teaching others than I will to directly doing the work, unobserved or unstudied.
I will measure my success more by how far I help a movement progress, as opposed to how immortal I render a single organization.
I will walk away from roles as soon as there’s someone who wants and needs it for growth and is capable of filling it and can properly steward its people and mission.
I will constantly be on the lookout for those people.
I’ll lead out loud, and invite criticism. I’ll listen and express appreciation when it is given in good faith.
I take responsibility for my actions. I support my family and community. I strive to minimize my individual footprint.
I believe in the potential of all people to do good.
I stand up to bullies and butchers. I know evil when I see it, and will do everything in my power to stop it.
I am more concerned for the safety of others than myself. As I age, I increase my comfort with the reality that I will soon die, and from there I source my courage.
As long as children are starving, I will never become a billionaire. I won’t wait to give away my wealth, and I’ll fight to make sure that one person’s avarice is never treated as more important culturally or legally than another person’s right to life.
I live with levity. Life is too short to take everything so seriously.

Frameworks and Methodologies

There are three important and unique frameworks Timeless Leader uses to help members, clients, and the broader community.

The Century View (What we decide to do)

A measure of impact on the scale of 100 years effectively bridges the infinitesimal window of a single moment (where we have maximum free will), and the billions of years of the universe. Somewhere in between, there is the lifespan of an individual human. Setting priorities and strategies that account for impact of a life – and the immediate generations to follow – is a uniquely powerful level to “zoom” in on.

Growth Cubed Impact (How we measure our actions)

We are in the business of growth, but seek to balance growth of individuals, organizations, and movements for positive change. Through this lens, we can prioritize actions and integrate solutions that produce sustainable valuable.

MAP - MOBILIZE - MANIFEST (How we act)

To take action, we must begin with a high-level MAP of our purpose and vision, informed by The Century View and evaluated by Growth Cubed Impact.
Armed with a vision, we need to plan our action and MOBILIZE the resources to achieve it. We prepare for this with the DREAMS framework (Discover, Research & Explore, Analyze, and Match Solutions).
Once mobilized, we can MANIFEST our vision and plans. This involves following the REALITY method of assigning roles and responsibilities, empowering individuals to act, analyzing performance, learning & iterating, complete the transmutation, and finally yielding power to long-term stewards of the new form.