Today’s dose of healthy common sense for tech leaders: You’re probably not planning things enough. The pendulum swing in the industry over the past couple of decades has made planning be seen almost as a complete waste. Yes, agile has taught us that detailing product requirements down to the pixel months in advance is a […]
It’s common practice to say it’s the leaders’ job to protect their team, be a buffer (Andy Grove), shield them (Rands), abstract things (Ben Horowitz), etc. Yes, however we overdo it. If you believe that’s a major part of your role as a leader and what you ask your managers to do, you might be […]
No matter how experienced you are in the technical aspects of the role, being a tech executive requires knowing how to communicate with other executives in the company, and especially having a great relationship with the CEO. For some people, this is a scary and problematic aspect of the job, yet I’ve found that boiling […]
In times of economic uncertainty, like many startups have been going through, it’s natural to opt for playing it safe. However, deciding to do so can risk your organization forgetting what startups should be about: taking the right risks. Sometimes, the best thing we can do is bang our head against the wall for a […]
A CEO once told me it felt like the CTO misheard and thought his title was CT-NO. “Can we do that? No. Is that feasible? No.” After wiping myself from having spilled my coffee laughing, I realized that’s such a common stance tech executives take that I’m surprised I hadn’t heard the term earlier. Let’s […]
You might know the old adage about the only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation and naming things. Sadly, we disregard the effort people have put into naming things properly and abuse them. The other day a barista asked me if I wanted some milk in my macchiato or just foam. I’m not […]
From time to time, people revisit the concept of ‘10x engineers’ and contemplate whether that is purely a mythical creature. Well, having witnessed such engineers and teams in the past several times, I know the answer, and in this article, I’ll attempt to list some of the team concepts, processes, and skills that enabled those […]
It feels like it should go without saying that startups always entail a healthy dose of uncertainty. It should come with the territory, right? However, for a few years as the tech industry skyrocketed, startups became ‘too’ secure. As it was so easy to raise money, it was rare to see startups closing. That resulted […]
Many tech leaders tell me they feel adrift. Instead of deciding where they’d like to go today, they are shoved here and there based on whatever issues the day brings. In what feels like a nod to Douglas Adams’s writing, they are leaders being led by their calendars and interruptions. You can take the lead […]
In another effort to open the kimono, here is another key part of effective executive coaching. Many tech leaders find it hard to decide what behaviors they should be working on personally. One diagnostic measure that is effective in helping them realize what their “defaults” are and what to focus on to grow as leaders […]