Whether you’re managing a group or facing challenges solo, these aphorisms offer a way to streamline your thinking and create a culture that thrives on problem-solving.
Tag: Leadership
Finding the Goldilocks Zone: Just the right amount of process
All the struggling organizations I have worked in shared one common characteristic. They had process deficiencies: some did too little, while some did too much. The best-performing orgs? They did just right.
Leadership Strategies for Product Maturity Phases
This post delves into crucial challenges at each product maturity phase. Senior engineering managers and high-level executives will benefit significantly from examining their portfolios and applying applicable strategies.
Turning Tension into Triumph: Techniques for Tough Conversations
This article distills some hard-learned lessons into reusable playbooks for tense situations and is for everyone trying to improve their conflict resolution skills.
The cow and the chicken: overcoming resistance to change
The Cow and Chicken are journeying through the countryside and see a diner with a sign that reads "Steak and Eggs". The chicken nudges the cow and cackles delightfully: "Look! Look, Cow!! We're famous!!!". Whereupon, the cow looks at the same sign and snorts derisively: you're involved! I am committed!!
Help! I’m stuck! I want to get to the next level!!
This article clarifies how promotions work and highlights potential pitfalls. It describes a career-growth framework based on technical skills, interpersonal relationships, and influence. As one becomes more senior, the balance between these skills shifts, demanding more focus on relationships and influence.
The complicated parts of leadership: Eliminate chaos
Introduction "How can I trust you? You keep telling me about a new direction every other month" My report after the 3rd organizational pivot within three months. Background I was dumbstruck – there was nothing I could say. As a line manager, I was responsible for delivering the message even though I didn't make some … Continue reading The complicated parts of leadership: Eliminate chaos
The complicated parts of leadership: Trust and Verify
In this series of short stories, I share tricky situations I've encountered while leading teams. These experiences have taught me invaluable leadership lessons and greatly influenced my management style. I hope to help others become more effective leaders by sharing these anecdotes.
The complicated parts of leadership: Betting on people
In this series of short stories, I share tricky situations I've encountered while leading teams. These experiences have taught me invaluable leadership lessons and greatly influenced my management style. I hope to help others become more effective leaders by sharing these anecdotes.
10x your feedback game: Choose kindness over niceness
What if I told you there was a way to overcome that sinking feeling associated with delivering feedback? Yes! You can learn to deliver great feedback with deliberate practice. Read on to learn some useful techniques.
Book Review: Slack, Getting past burnout, busywork, and the myth of total efficiency
Leaders (managers, directors, VPs, etc.) should read this book if they want to create teams that execute predictably; the book also covers culture and other subtle elements that make teams work efficiently.
Defense-in-depth: a strategy for leading understaffed teams
Leading an underfunded team is a challenge most managers will face over their careers. This blog post provides techniques and a framework for delivering impact under such conditions.
3 quick tips for leading through uncertain times
This post offers three tips for leading teams going through a difficult period. It could be attrition, product changes, reorgs, uncertainty, etc. It is a playbook of 3 key things to keep in mind and includes a FAQ list of likely questions.
Four mistakes I made as a new manager
This article relates hard-learned lessons as a newbie engineering manager. It targets new leads by clarifying leadership pitfalls to avoid.
When sleeping dogs bite: Unmaintained systems breed disasters
The issue with systems that do not 'fail' is that they have no fixes when they eventually fail.
Leading through difficult times: Put on your oxygen mask first
The story of the most challenging stretch of my career so far and how I acquired years of leadership experience within months.
From Chaos to Comfort: Transforming business output by eliminating pain
This post describes leading a team through a tough turbulent transition while handling hypergrowth and business pivots. It details the focus on high leverage activities to break the loop of never-ending toilsome tasks and reactive fires.
How to rapidly onboard new teams: Part II
This post focuses on steps to take during the first 3 months of forming a new team. It is the second post in the "How to onboard teams" series which covers lessons and techniques acquired from ramping up many teams.
How to run better stand-ups
There is a high chance that you attend or have attended an inefficiently-run stand-up. I have seen various stand-up styles over the years. Sadly, most of the roughly 2000 stand-ups I attended were unproductive. Mildly put, most were status reports for some manager or higher up.
What values do great leaders encourage?
I have had several managers across several teams and projects. This has exposed me to various management styles and taught me what to emulate and what to avoid. There are no silver bullets when it comes to leadership however these are a few things I appreciate.
High Output Management: Chapter 2 Review
A summary of chapter 2 of high output management
Leading teams: Stop giving answers
Stop giving people answers all the time!
Five challenges of engineering teams
5 important ideas that engineering teams need to keep in mind to optimize value delivery.
Kind Leadership: Influence over Authority
One of the most underrated parts of working at any job is interacting with people. It is amazing how much humans achieve via collaboration and also how fast relationships can degenerate.
What you should do before you start reforms
What do you do when you run into code that apparently serves no purpose? Do you immediately expunge the code? Also, what do you do if you have to follow some organizational process that appears to make no sense? Do you just eliminate the process?
