In early modern France, the monarchy kept running into the same problem. Wars were expensive, revenue was not steady, and every obvious solution came with a political price. New taxes were politically explosive. Borrowing was finite. So the crown found an interesting idea to fund its endeavors. It sold offices, judicial positions, and administrative posts. People with money, mostly nobles, […]
As organizations grow across geographies, one thing becomes disproportionately important. Culture. We, engineers, often dismiss culture as soft and cushy. This is until you see the hard costs of ignoring it. Culture isn’t just how we feel about work; it is the distributed operating system for how decisions are made when leadership isn’t in the room. There is company culture, […]
A few companies back, my manager and I inherited a group of teams after layoffs. Confidence was already low. People didn’t believe in the systems we maintained. Stakeholders lost trust in what we did. Results were inconsistent, and even routine work needed more verification than it should have. We tried to steady things, but it was hard to know what […]
In 1935, Boeing had a new bomber prototype, the Model 299, which later became the B-17. It was impressive, and it was also easy to mess up because it had more switches and steps than pilots were used to. During a demonstration flight, the aircraft lifted off, climbed, then stalled and crashed. The investigators did not conclude that the pilots […]
If you’ve been in leadership for a while, you know the drill: a line manager reports team progress along with the PM, anyone above reviews it in cadence and sees how things are moving. As business shifts, priorities shift, so you need to adjust without losing continuity or direction, from one cycle to the next. We all hate meetings, but […]