It really is a tough job running a product engineering organization. It is extremely easy to optimize for short-term results and “getting things done.” That would definitely position you as an effective leader and get you some pats on the back. That is, until one day, you’ll realize someone else whizzed past your team. Let’s […]
If you want to unlock your team’s potential, it has to be able to work at maximal speed, with minimum to no failure work. On our quest to triple impact-per-engineer, let’s talk about one part of that core: creating autonomy. When there’s no autonomy, leaders tend to act as “routers.” Everything goes through them. Progress […]
For quite some time, I’ve preferred the term “product engineering” over plainly “engineering” or “R&D.” That’s mainly because, as I’ve written before, the most important partnership of any tech executive is with their product peer. However, it seems that even while many leaders understand this at face value, they don’t know how to translate this […]
While IDEs make refactoring straightforward, doing the same with your org chart is not as easy. Yes, you might use a tool to drag teams and people around, but the same principles that make for clean code don’t necessarily map to teams. Here’s a quick grab bag of pitfalls I’ve seen in my work. As […]
Every so often, you reach a point where the organization you’re leading seems not to be making adequate progress. If you’ve made some attempts at improving yet seem to be at an impasse, the solution is rarely to keep butting your head against the wall but harder. That’s when a reset might be in order—a […]
The theme recently has been all about drastically improving teams’ impact. In a tech climate where companies are no longer growing like crazy, and startups are expected to create a *gasp* business, efficacy is on everyone’s minds. Luckily for us, this more organic and sensible industry enables us to drive impact more easily, which is […]
You know what gets people interested? A good hero story. You share about a crisis at work, how dire the situation was, and how you found the right thing to do or saved the day just at the right moment. In working with leaders, I’ve realized that too often, these types of stories, no matter […]
We all know those leaders who seem to always be maximizing their time and learning nonstop. There’s no new book they haven’t read or a trending article they haven’t already filed in their read-it-later queue. Name the acronym, and they’ll tell you its meaning—even if you just made it up. If this hits too close […]
A few weeks ago, I spoke in front of a group of founders of early-stage startups. The conversation centered on the difference between how startups “looked like” during their careers so far and how different things are for them now. What they “learned” earlier seems no longer relevant, given the disappearance of “cheap money.” I […]
I can’t help but cringe when clients ask me about relaying R&D metrics to the CEO or the board of directors. These KPIs, which usually have no business being discussed in those forums, are often something tech executives bring up themselves, not realizing that doing so is handicapping their own authority. Like the cat that […]