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, […]
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 […]
Managers change more often than you realize, especially when a company is growing or downsizing. New roles, new org charts, new reporting lines. Other times, you’re shopping around and you find yourself interviewing your future boss and trying to read between the lines. Ultimately, you will have a new manager in one way or another. Sometimes you end up reporting […]
Over the years, working across multiple organizations, I developed the concept of subteam tenets. I’ve tweaked it along the way to fit each company’s unique quirks, but I still use it to this day, and it has helped me navigate challenging situations. It’s really a system of divide and conquer, nothing fancy to be honest, but it lays down clear […]