One of my favourite things to do professionally is to “get the lay of the land” when I join a new team or company. I love what I call “doing the detective work”, getting to know the people and history, learning about what’s been working well and what needs improvement.
How to do this effectively is a question I’m frequently asked, particularly by friends who are about to embark on new journeys as Engineering Managers themselves. Because these strategies have served me well in the past, a few days ago I wrote a little Twitter thread to share them:
I’m curious — what’s your take on this? How do you approach coming in as a new manager and leader? What mistakes did you make?
While you maybe ponder these questions, let’s move on to this week’s edition… 👇
3 Articles
✍️ 3 Crucial Things I’ve Learned In My First 30 Days As A Manager
Becoming an Engineering Manager presents a unique challenge to everyone who does it: how is this different from being an Engineer? I love this authentic and honest take by Katie Womersley -- it was written in the moment as she was starting back in 2016, and she beautifully gets at the core of what servant leadership really is.
✍️ How to make compound interest work for you?
In a day and age where most things are short-lived, where most of us quickly jump from one thing to the next, compounding is even more of a competitive advantage. Interestingly, this concept can be applied in much of our life and work -- and allow us to reap the benefits. This post is perhaps the most compelling and vivid explanation of the power of compound interest I have come across so far.
Famed Intel CEO Andy Grove wrote in the preface to the 1995 edition of High Output Management: “Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos”. What the folks at Stay SaaSy bring home here is that a lot of leadership really is about reigning that chaos Grove was talking about, referring to growth companies. And ultimately, again, it's about mastering the fundamentals really, really well.
2 Podcasts
🎧 Managing Remote Developer Teams
How to best lead and nurture remote and distributed teams has been a topic du jour for obvious reasons. I picked this podcast with Katie Womersley for a couple of reasons: it was recorded months before COVID19 happened, and it's a thorough and tactical examination of managing remote teams. Moreover, with her 2016 blog post above as an anchor, it shows Katie's early thinking truly was the foundation for her to become a confident and successful VP Engineering.
🎧 Using Checklists For Onboarding Success
Companies obsesses about hiring but not nearly as much with successfully onboarding the new folks. Which is a shame, considering how correlated that is with talent retention. In this podcast, Radoslav Stankov, Head of Engineering at Product Hunt gives good insight on effective onboarding via (always evolving) checklists, as well as the power of what he calls "Single Player Mode" as a means to reducing dependencies and move faster.
1 Book
📚 Wooden on Leadership by John Wooden, with Steve Jamison
A few years ago, I was introduced to Coach Wooden by a senior leader in my company, through this book right here. It is no understatement to say it changed my life and my career. The principles it exposed me to became the bedrock of my own leadership practice.
John Wooden (1910-2010) never coached in the NBA (not for lack of offers) but his record in college basketball in unparalleled. As a head coach, his UCLA teams won 10 NCAA championships over the course of his last 12 seasons. To date, no one got even close. There are a number of books about Coach Wooden, but I found Wooden on Leadership to be the best source for deeply understanding the foundations of his incredible success.
Success, by the way, is a funny word. Many think of it as riches, being #1, winning… you name it. Coach Wooden won… a lot. But his definition of success was remarkably different:
"Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable."
Paradoxically, this makes success both attainable for all, and incredibly difficult. Attainable because it is suddenly 100% under our control. Incredibly difficult because how many of us actually have the patience, discipline, and fortitude to consistently do the hard work day in, day out, for years?
One of the great stories in the book is how Coach Wooden would start every single season, no matter how many championship wins came before, by explaining again to everyone how to put on their socks right. Why, you ask? One, because otherwise the risk of wrinkles leading to blisters was high, leading to pain and thus not allowing one to be at their best. But second, to send a clear message that success lies in doing everything you can “to become the best of which you are capable.” That’s culture.
I find Wooden’s leadership principles — and his famous Pyramid of Success, which beautifully makes the implicit explicit — fundamental for building world-class teams. I urge you to stop listening to any “leaders” who want you to believe success is bred by obsessing with results. Instead, embrace the truth that great teams are built out of great individuals who don’t get confused by what success really means. Results, inevitably, follow.
🙌🏽 Thank you for reading! Enjoyed this week’s edition? Have feedback on how I can make this more valuable to you? I’d love to hear it — my DMs are open on Twitter or just write a comment below.
✍️ Find some of my own ramblings on tech and org stuff over at The Evolutionary Manager.
👉 You can also follow me on Twitter @prla