I'd highly recommend watching Marco Arment's talk from last year's Çingleton conference on scaling your career.

Video

I can certainly identify times in my own career where I've been sitting around waiting for someone to hand me authority. And I can also remember times where I just stood up and took that authority, whether I really believed I was capable of doing it or not. I certainly regret the former and haven't ever regretted the later.

Thanks to Scott Morrison, owner of Indev Software and newly transplanted Saskatoon resident, for reminding me about the 2012 (and 2011) videos available on Vimeo. They've got great talks from really smart folks in the Apple community viewable for free if you're interested in that kind of thing.