A challenge for all leaders of growing R&D organizations is maintaining a certain momentum throughout the ranks. Not to disregard the benefit of tools for measuring velocity, I have a hard time with its innate subjectivity. With time, teams face a stale velocity. I’ve discussed why we want to revisit our velocity in the past, […]
A subject that many executives feel incredibly uncomfortable addressing is their ultimate departure. Nothing lasts forever. The average tenure of non-founding executives seems to revolve around three years. Yours might be a bit longer or shorter, but refusing to accept the fact that it will come to an end might just make things worse when […]
Constant personal growth is key to creating teams that are the best in the world and helping your employees fully utilize their potential and achieve self-actualization. In The Tech Executive Operating System, I recommend managers help their teammates set new personal growth targets every 2-3 months. Many executives and senior leaders are fine with this […]
The biggest time-suck for my clients in the past few years certainly has to be hiring. It seems like every single company nowadays has dozens of open positions. That reality coupled with what is currently called “the great resignation” might make the concept of helping people quit crazy. However, I’ve seen companies spiral downwards when […]
Growing organizations need to create new teams with time. This article covers some FAQs that I discuss in depth in The Tech Executive Operating System. Being aware of these questions and having answers ready will help you avoid some common pitfalls and set the new team up for success. Can you form a team before […]
We all want to “raise the bar.” What does it actually mean, though? Assessing R&D organizations often shows a clear dichotomy: sometimes, we need to genuinely raise the bar. That means that a new capability or profession are lacking and require rapid injection. For example, the company suddenly realizes that it needs a mobile application […]
About 15 years ago, I first put a post-it note on my monitor with a prompt that I found incredibly useful. Over the years, I’ve used it a lot personally, to the point where I wrote scripts to randomly send notifications reminding me about it once my brain got used to the note and started […]
We’ve all heard the advice to “do things that don’t scale” at the early stages of startups. I quite agree with it. Unfortunately, as with many pithy sayings, it can be overused or abused. When we fail to understand the logic that drives it and where the same approach doesn’t apply, we are bound to […]
Miscommunication is an odd thing. When you are used to writing a lot every day—but in code, not prose—you get used to thinking that words are easy. You write something and the compiler understands precisely that (unless you have a bug, of course). If only things were as easy when we have to talk to […]
Here’s a nice story that I found out about as I was writing my book: Hermit crabs have to get new and larger shells as they grow. Moving to a new shell requires a leap of faith, as they are vulnerable while trying on the new shells. This danger is unavoidable: the other option is […]