The Executive “Approach”

I often mentor up and coming leaders who have ambitions to become an executive at some point in their career.  When I think about all the paved steps that have been laid out for me on my path to my role today, I’m extremely grateful for the ones that have come before me and the mentors and leaders, who believed in me and whose shoulders I stand upon.  So that being said, I write this reflection with a great sense of humility and gratitude for those lessons and wanted to share those lessons along with my own personal reflections and advice on the pursuit of becoming an effective engineering executive.  Here is what I’ve learned so far … Enjoy

So now the obvious … Executive leadership is an extremely challenging  yet rewarding career path.  The weight of an entire organization (in my case 160+ engineers and support staff) lies on the shoulders of the executive leader that must be highly accountable, competent, decisive and demonstrate strong business intuition.  In addition to being an effective executive one must have a high EQ in order to navigate multiple dimensions of their job, understand and anticipate different strategic angles and be an effective champion and advocate for their organization.  The payout for being able to do those things effectively is that an executive leader can make a tremendous amount of impact on an organization as well as their employees careers and personal goals.

In the Software Engineering World specifically, an executive must be able to elevate their thinking while at the same time be close enough to the work to develop an intimate relationship with the product being developed without being a micro manager.  They must care about details while scaling their leaders decision making and providing the right level of autonomy.  Through my own experiences being in leadership over the last 7 years I have taken meticulous notes, pondered on mistakes I’ve made and journaled on lessons learned from the mentors and co-workers I’ve worked side by side with.  I have developed principles for how I lead which ultimately I have used as I’ve grown into my role today.  Each of these principles act more as a framework of leadership rather than an implementation playbook.  These principles are my north star that represents the leader I aspire to be each and every day.  That being said, take a look at the following principles and use them, modify them, contribute to them, strike them out as you see necessary.  Enjoy!

Abe’s 12 Principles of Executive Leadership (Always a work In progress) :

Have an “Approach” that scales

There are many threads of advice on how to be a good leader and an effective boss, etc.  However, one of the things that I always take away from any tactics or philosophies is development of a solid “approach”.  What is an approach?  It’s a way you look at a problem, break it down and figure out what your next move is going to be.  An approach is not necessarily a plan.  It’s not something that is always executable.  It is truly a honing in of the identification of the problem and then leveraging your skills, experiences and brain power to take the next step.  An approach allows you to be you.  An approach allows you to leverage your greatest skill which is your experiences and your skills.  Some people don’t take the time to develop an intentional approach to solving problems.  They simply start working.  It’s important to identify your approach and then hone it, make it better and have it be your biggest asset in solving problems and making decisions. 

Oscillate in and out of the details

Details matter at all levels.  I see executives fall into the trap of flying too high at the 30k foot level while ignoring the details and being irresponsible with commitments they sign their team up for.  I think being highly accountable to your craft and your organization requires you to go in and out of details with grace and minimal disruption to your teams.  This means you have to develop systems and muscles to ensure you have the right level of details for every decision.  In an engineering organization details matter because systems either work or they don’t work.  Understanding your systems and being curious all the time will not only keep you interested in the details it will inspire your teams and create a strong culture of curiosity in the wake of your interest.  Leaders should care about details.

Develop and nurture strong relationships with your leaders

Strong relationships and feedback loops with your leaders is probably one of the most important if not the most important strategies you can deploy as an executive.  This doesn’t mean you need to be friends and be in good standing with everyone on your team, but you need to be clear on expectations and then provide a feedback loop of specific examples of ways they are tracking to your expectations or not.  Treat them like humans, be genuinely interested in their work and try and understand their career goals and met them where they are.  A great leader, boss, mentor and friend once told me “The best way to lose an individual that is top talent is to treat them like they aren’t top talent”.

Spend time and effort to “know” your technology stack.

If you are an engineering leader, I don’t think you can be effective without a strong understanding of your technology stack.  Period.  Don’t be scared to look at code and ask questions.  Don’t be scared to prototype to understand.  Find a “technical” mentor and advisor, an engineer on your team who you can spend time with to teach you more on the details of the stacks that you build software on.  Be genuinely curious about the details and always keep a technical book on your desk to learn new concepts and tech stuff throughout the year.  If anything that book staring at you will guilt you into opening it from time to time and pondering on a fresh technical concept. 

Understand the needs of your workforce

Always ask “what can you do for your team”?  Your workforce has needs and sometimes it’s the simple things like a tool or a queued request that is holding up their flow of work that you can help get moving along.  At the end of the day, your success is dependent on your engineers being able to get their jobs done.  So, always have a pulse on where the biggest needs are in your organization and keep an inventory of solutions that you can work through to gain traction for them.  This has two major effects.  1) your team will come to see you as someone who listens and can truly help them versus just some executive who is out of touch with their organizational day to day challenges.  2) This will force you to see where the bottle necks are in your organization and how much work is lost due to disruption in flow that you can influence positively.

Be the “FACE” of your organization

As an executive of an organization, you must realize quickly that the buck stops at you.  That is not only for accountability, but when it comes to representing your organization you must be the face of the organization.  People don’t associate groups of people with organizations, they associate the leader.  This is a critical realization that I’ve come to understand over the last several years as it is extremely important to not only market your work, but market your organization and build an identity that is a reflection of you and your leadership style.  How you lead and conduct yourself within and outside your organization will allow you to build a strong reputation of organizational success.

Create management routines to stay focused on the operational details of your org

One of my favorite quotes from the “Art of War” is “Plan for what is difficult, while it is easy”.   This one resonates on many levels.  It is important to have routines and systems to keep the operational day to day discipline of your organization in check.  Be intentional about what you want to focus on, create S.M.A.R.T goals and objectives and then install management routines that you don’t compromise on to ensure you have the right focus on the operations of your org.  Not only will this provide a strong rhythm of discipline and process, it will become so ingrained in your organizational structure that the discipline becomes second nature.  Having a routine also opens up mental space to be strategic and focus on forward thinking initiatives, due to having the operational focus on a mechanical rhythm instead of reacting to breached SLO’s and out of bound metrics.  Plan for what is difficult while it is easy.

Provide intellectual stimulation to your leaders

One thing I have learned from working with people who are smarter than me is that you have to challenge them and keep them challenged constantly.   I recognized early in my career that being able to do more than you are able to do by yourself is a function of having the right people on your team and then pushing them to identify with a personal purpose in the work they do.  The key to doing this on an on-going basis is to not only give them tough problems to solve but challenge their way of thinking and grow their capacity to learn as a part of your leadership.  I have found that when you ask people to do more, if it aligns with an intrinsic purpose they will do more and push themselves on their own.  You have to trust that people come to work with more than just a desire to make money, they come to work with a desire to make a difference.  Challenging them on an intellectual level will always create growth in your organization.

Set standard high for great work, then recognize often when you see it

It may seem intuitive that you have to set a high standard of great work for your team.  That starts with you and how you show up each and every day.  But in addition to setting the “tone” of what the standard is you MUST recognize it when you see it.  Recognize it often.  Don’t water down recognition but ensure that you are building a culture of recognition and appreciation of feats of high performance.  I’m not talking about heroics but rather consistent performance that drives out the objectives that the organization has set out to accomplish.  Recognition doesn’t always have to be a large spot bonus or a significant communication, but rather an expected, effective and genuine recognition for great work on a very perpetual basis.

Provide inspirational communication often at all levels.

You cannot underestimate the power and influence you have with your organization.  Your communication across the organization is extremely important as a way to reinforce organizational alignment and key messages.  It is also a platform to inspire.  Since you are the “face” of the face of the organization and people are taking queues from what you say, use forums, townhalls and digital channels to dialogue with your organization and have a presence with the people in it.  Often times, an inspirational communication keeps people motivated and grounded in the day to day work.  Especially, as 2020 has reset our expectations of work as a leader being “exceedingly human” with your workforce will create a culture of empathy and humility.

Think around corners and identify head winds and tail winds.

As an executive, there are so many angles to manage.  Politics, systems availability, HR issues, interpersonal conflict, customer satisfaction, financials, deadlines, etc.  Being able to take time to think through what could be coming at us as an organization and getting ahead of those head winds (risks/issues) and tail winds (opportunities) is a muscle that you must develop as you progress in your scope and responsibility.  In addition, grow the leaders around you to also think through these scenarios as well so that you can get more perspective into areas and situations that you may not have purview into.  Scaling yourself is key to being a strategic thinker and the more strategic thinkers you have around you the more of a competency you will have as a part of your organization.

Be indispensable to your business partner / customer

An engineering executive must be able to do all the things above and do them well.  There is a relentless pursuit of adaptation and change one must deal with to be effective.  However, the most important thing any executive must focus on is being an indispensable advisor to your product customer or business partner.  This will require you to think as a “business” person first while influencing your thinking with engineering second.  A product executive that relies on your teams to deliver solutions wants to ensure that their partner understands their goals and objectives and can help lock arms and deliver.  In order to be indispensable, however an engineering leader must be able to think, talk and act as if they were a product executive, thinking about costs, speed and market share of the products they build.  They will need to be able to represent their product executive in the room, should they not be there and continue to deliver value in ways that are broader than just building engineering solutions.