Moving Upstream

A common fallacy for tech executives is not accepting their role in the company, at least not in its entirety. Advising, coaching, and talking with dozens of executives, I’ve seen this issue creep up again and again. I don’t care if you’re the CTO or “just” the VP of Engineering, nor whether you’re a cofounder […]

The Habit of Challenging the Status Quo

Lately, it seems like everyone’s cheese has been moving around a lot. From working in the office to working remotely to hybrids. From one strategy that made sense “before” to the new approach adjusted to the “new normal.” Can we say the status quo is being changed if there isn’t one? One of the things […]

Strategy as a Tactic

Right now, many companies realize that they have an urgent need to act fast. As the saying goes—no one wants to waste a good crisis. Teams with the means for investment and the ability to execute smoothly can take steps to ensure they come out of the current situation better than they came into it. […]

Lowering Your Doubling Time

We all have been hearing too much about compounding effects lately. When it comes to pandemics, one would unequivocally want to see the doubling time increase. However, there are those who have been pursuing the magic of compounding for decades, and they are focused on lowering it. My mentor, Alan Weiss, often recites his 1% […]

Balancing Safety and Productivity

To create an engineering organization that’s focused on high-impact and that routinely provides innovation, you have to put in place a culture based on curiosity and willingness to fail. Genuine novelty does not always succeed. I can say unequivocally that most teams I worked with started in a default state of risk aversion. No one […]

Increasing Your Executive Leverage

Many leaders and executives are lately feeling a void. Sheltering in place and working from home means, for most, that there are a lot fewer interruptions. That, on top of the zero commute time, translates to more discretionary time than they are accustomed to having. Now they have to decide what to do with it. […]

Missed Opportunity Cost

I see many companies rushing to take action and react to the pandemic. Given the current global economic changes, it makes complete sense to revisit your company’s strategy and recalibrate. However, what seems to be the knee jerk reaction here is not the right strategy for everyone. Entire industries have furloughed many employees, and others […]

Thoughts on Team Productivity in Quarantine

Since the pandemic has started, I’ve been talking to many clients, readers, and friends. I probably spoke with almost a hundred different executives and managers in tech the last few weeks. I asked most of them a simple question: how has the team been doing with the quarantine WFH? Here’s what I have gathered from […]

Your Managers Are Passing Their Time Cargo-Culting Important Work

During these interesting times where multitudes of tech businesses are busy trying to reinvent how they work together (and sometimes their business models), it is becoming clearer and clearer that there is a big gap between what managers think they should do to what they truly should do. You cannot blame this on the pandemic: […]

What Are You Waiting For?

A scenario I’ve seen several times is one where a person in a leadership position, after deciding and announcing they will be switching jobs, finally starts acting on things they’ve been procrastinating for months and sometimes even years. As if a huge weight has been lifted off their shoulders, they provide feedback, lay out plans, […]