I know the title might be a bit provocative, but life’s too short to always sugarcoat harsh feedback. This article is a collection of real things I regularly hear from CEOs, other executives, and employees. Too often, people don’t feel comfortable saying these things to your face, so you can be wasting precious months and […]
I’ve rarely seen anyone honestly admit to being controlled by their egos at work. I’m sure you never partake in irrational thought, it’s just everyone else around you, right? The fact of the matter is that often, when I’m working with executives about issues, they already have a hunch about the right way to address […]
One superpower every leader needs to wield effectively is super coaching. Past the buzzwords, that means providing people with timely, sincere feedback and buttressing a support system to ensure it helps people grow and maximize their potential. Many leaders, though, suck at this. Poor feedback has a trifold negative impact on organizations. First, you’re squandering […]
Sometimes, it seems that there’s an inverse relation between the number of people with leadership titles in a startup and how much initiative the startup actually has. Part of the responsibility of being a leader is to help your company take the lead (or maintain it). As you’re honing your 2024 roadmaps, let’s consider whether […]
So many startup leaders bemoan that their team seems to “lack a sense of urgency.” As a freelance coder, clients would regularly comment I was getting more done in two days a week than their FTEs. Is that (solely) due to my awesome coding skillz? Nope. The path to making your team more badass often […]
If you have an engineering background, you’ve doubtless spoken of tech debt more than you ought to. For developers, tech debt is a trap that often steals more time than provides real value. It’s the path of least resistance where we can exert our cleverness without anyone else being the wiser about the real importance […]
I’ll start with a little flex to make my point. During my career as a professional coder, I shipped code in at least 13 different programming languages. Naturally, I wasn’t an expert in all of those, but I was quite proficient in most. One rule that continued manifesting during all those years was clear: something […]
Innovation in the tech sector often hinges on a concept that goes beyond technical prowess or market strategy. It’s a concept I refer to as ‘product mastery’—a shared purpose and understanding of the company’s vision, critical for leading R&D organizations to bring about real innovation and novelty. But what does product mastery look like in […]
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 […]