Leadership & Strategy

Finding the Right Moment of Opportunity to Advance Yourself

After working as an individual contributor for many years, the author decided to pursue a career in management. They took the initiative to manage a junior team in their office for a three month period, and received positive feedback. Through this experience, they learned the importance of taking ownership of their career, being a solution provider, staying informed, and having conversations with their managers.

Internalizing Your Company Values

This article discusses the importance of having a strong, values-based culture in a company. It explains how having a documented culture and values can help bridge cultural differences, solve conflicts, and form hiring processes, rewards/promotions, and increase employee engagement. It also suggests ways to reinforce values, such as using discretionary bonuses and publicizing values.

How Managers Can Spot Burnout in Their Employees

Managers should take responsibility for spotting warning signs of burnout in employees and take steps to prevent it. Three leading causes of burnout are not making an impact, disrupted work-life balance, and lack of focus. Managers should take different approaches for each of these root causes, such as regular check-ins and career-focused one-on-ones, understanding what employees care about, and ensuring that employees are focused on one thing at a time. Stress and frustration can be reduced by understanding why employees are not getting enough return on their investment, carving time for personal life, and ensuring that employees are engaged and able to bring their full selves to work.

Reasons Promoting From Within Is Better for Growing Your Business

When a principal engineer left a team without a backup plan, the Associate Director had to decide whether to groom a senior engineer to the next level or hire a Lead engineer from outside. The Associate Director chose to groom the senior engineer, giving him more ownership and products, and dividing the project lifecycle into three phases. The Associate Director invested a lot of time with the senior engineer, providing feedback and 1:1s, and after two quarters the senior engineer was ready to lead independently. The lessons learned from this experience were to invest in the internal team, be tactful in choosing and nurturing second-line leaders, and lead by example.

Dealing with Uncertainties and Adapting as You Go

Organizations are facing a high level of uncertainty due to the changes in the work environment since 2020. Teams need to find the right balance between short- and long-term plans and incorporate flexibility. Managers should have discussions with their teams about the organization’s mission and stakeholders. Teams should have weekly achievements instead of monthly targets and frequent and purposeful communication. To build long-lasting teams, team-building activities should be encouraged and mission-driven, autonomous teams should be fostered.

The Hidden Value of Agile Processes

After becoming popular to deconstruct Agile and not use Scrum or XP anymore, the author attempted to keep their team processes as lightweight as possible. However, they failed to acknowledge the hidden benefits of Agile processes. After experimenting with processes, the author learned to understand the second-order effects of the processes they use, limit the scope of experiments, and not follow processes blindly.