Catching Your Breath

Many managers and leaders have become addicted to productivity porn. Everywhere I look, I see teams discussing time wasted, optimizing processes, and squeezing out some more time to work (remember Soylent?). As someone who regularly talks about tripling impact-per-engineer, I want to stress the difference between chasing productivity and focusing on efficacy. You cannot create […]

Processing

There are two scenarios that are frequent in my day-to-day. The first is where a company approaches me because its leaders feel like they do not have enough processes in place to accommodate their growth. The second is the opposite: an executive might feel like things are slowly grinding to a halt because too many […]

The Case for Fewer Engineers

The current “way of doing things” in startup-land seems to revolve around hiring engineers in droves the second the company has secured funding. However, just because it has become a norm doesn’t mean it makes sense. Could you be actually doing better with smaller teams around? First, I’ll state that this is chiefly directed at […]

Where Are You Headed?

Tech executives often come to me and share their disappointment about the role they seem to be taking in their companies. They feel that they are not being utilized correctly or are not viewed as real executives. I’d say that more often than not, when someone feels like this, it’s true. Nevertheless, the real question […]