Roles at NFE

NFE has three roles. Most people hold one; some hold two; in rare cases, one person takes on all three.

Role	What they do	Durable skill
IC (builder / operator)	Build or operate the company, working with the tools	Judgement, taste, creativity
DRI	Own customer outcomes and assemble ICs to deliver them	Ownership, accountability
Player coach	Build the capability and capacity of the people around them	Coaching, empathy, building human capacity

1. IC: builder / operator

Salespeople, engineers, designers, product people: anyone working hands-on with the tools to build or operate the company.

ICs are augmented, with access to agents. One person can now do the work that a team, or 10 people, did in the past.

Durable skill: judgement, taste, creativity.

2. DRI: Directly Responsible Individual

Owns customer outcomes. A DRI:

puts the strategy together,
understands the roadmap well enough to understand customer needs and problems,
assembles a team of ICs to get something done.

Durable skill: ownership and accountability. The question every DRI can answer: what do you lead, and what are you ultimately responsible for?

How DRIs make decisions, and when approvals are needed, is covered in Directly Responsible Individuals.

3. Player coach

What we would call managers today. Player coaches build the capability and capacity of other people. Instead of telling them how to do it, they show them how to do it.

Player coaches are ICs or DRIs who are also really good at coaching the people around them.
They need to keep building, so they can show the skill they're teaching.
They don't need to be strategic, and they don't need to be a DRI.

Durable skill: building human capacity and coaching, with the empathy and soft skills great managers are known for.

Holding more than one role

Roles combine: an IC can be a player coach, and a DRI can be a player coach. In rare cases one person takes on all three.