Roles & Titles

Establishing the Goals for an Acquired Organization

A year ago, the author joined the office of a startup bought by their current company with the intent to expand their product across the US and globally. Through conversations with stakeholders and user research, the author proposed a flywheel structure and identified critical narratives and key metrics to measure performance. They also identified four future value streams and personas, and set goals for each vertical with key metrics. The team grew from two to ten members, and the business increased 8x in the next year according to the current plan. The author learned to build trust, think about users when building the team, not rush to hire people, and go deep to add value.

Why We Should Transform Performance Reviews

To improve performance reviews, a periodic compensation review system was introduced that decoupled performance and compensation. A judgment-free coaching system was also implemented, giving team members ownership of their own goals, progress, and results. This created a more motivating environment and showed a clear difference between proactive and reactive individuals. Judging people based on performance is counterproductive and does not motivate anyone.

Dealing with underperformance caused by a complex personal situation

A manager noticed an employee was taking a lot of sick days and not responding to the team. After a one-on-one conversation, the employee revealed he had a special needs child that was taking up a lot of his time. The manager worked with the employee to create a flexible schedule that allowed him to take care of his child and still be a reliable member of the team. This situation taught the manager the importance of empathy and proactively helping employees.

Less is More: How to Introduce OKR’s

This article discusses the importance of having simple, strategic OKR goals and the lessons learned from a failed attempt at improving customer satisfaction. It emphasizes the need for clear objectives and key responses, rallying around the OKR's, and evaluating if the plan is working without help. It also advises against merging OKR models and going back and forth between OKR and KPI.

Helping to resolve a long-standing conflict

Two senior engineers had a disagreement that escalated to the point where the team was afraid to push their own code. After a 1:1 meeting, the problem was resolved and the team implemented a "PR blocked" status check to prevent future issues. The lesson learned is that people may not realize the impact their behavior can have on their teams, unless it is pointed out to them.

Stumbling into chaos

The new director of engineering at a startup had to jump in on day one when the team had just done a re-org and re-oriented the product roadmap. He met with the CTO and engineering leads to understand why the new structure had been put in place, then worked with the product managers to focus on pieces they had high certainty of needing. He also added weekly planning meetings for each product team and daily standups to create structure and accountability. Through retros and feedback, he tailored these initial short-term fixes to their needs. He learned that plans often go awry and we have to adapt, look for short-term engineering work when long-term plans change, and creating a predictable process cadence can help create stability.