The principle here is simple: Balance your leadership contribution to the People, Product, and Process while keeping your eyes on the horizon. We are going to start this outsmarticle with a negative contrast. It drives home with clarity how simple this principle is, and how damaging it is to ignore. Consider a newly-promoted CTO. He is in his early thirties, …
Status: Loved it! Quick Summary: Another hit from Harvard Business School Press. We’ve been going about teams all wrong, seeking unity, and “team-bonding” and big teams… What works is clarity of purpose, getting in front of actual customers and problems, and coming togther as a team over the success from diving deep. Have a look; reconsider your approach.
Status: Bookshelf, pending read. Quick Summary: Highly recommended by a dear colleague/coach friend. Outsmarticles insights pending!
Status: 2 chapters in. Will make a great outsmarticle. Review forthcoming. Quick Summary: Ever noticed that great leaders do not always need the authority that they may or may not be given? Explore the endearing and enduring qualities of true leaders by examining them without their bureaucratic power. Identity, clarity, positivity, action… TBH I find the writing wordy, but worthy.
Status: I refer to this frequently, and gift it often. Invaluable resource. Quick Summary: Watkins makes a living helping people successfully do something we only do every few years; transition into a new role. In here are all the insights and gems and pearls of wisdom that you might accumulate if you spent years studying thousands of transitions. A must read for any …
Status: Bookshelf pending re-read. (Last read over a decade ago.) Quick Summary: Must-read from the heady Silicon Valley startup days. Basically, stop wasting your time trying to be the Individual Contributor you once were (good at). Pay attention to setting up your team to win, by giving them the individual space, and building the right org and processes.
Ever applied for a Product Management role because you love the Domain, even if the Product needs are not quite a perfect fit? Ever sought to fill a role where you need robust Product Leadership, and don’t really care about Domain Expertise? Graphing Domain Expertise vs. Product Expertise helps clarify the needs for a given role, and conversely to understand …
I once worked for a very large retail client located outside the mainstream tech talent pool. As I brought with me experience from Amazon and a variety of companies in the Bay Area, I had a unique perspective to add to the mix of leadership that for the most part had come up within the company with little outside influence. One of …
Let’s face it, defining org structures is difficult. Reorgs are an iceberg problem; They appear simple at first but get massively more complex as you dive deeper. There are many choices: Should we be hierarchical, or matrix, or a super-sexy hybrid approach? Should we build two-pizza teams like Amazon? They optimize for different outcomes: Do we want tight control and high leverage, …