Technocratic

For engineering & product leaders the team is the engine of success, yet why do we spend most of our time measuring individuals? As execs we preach that high-performing teams are the most important building blocks of organizations that consistently delivery high-quality products. But we invest more heavily in developing individuals. We celebrate individual performance, coach individual skills, and compensate / reward individual contributions—while team dynamics are often left to chance. We look to recruit that 10X engineer or product manager but we never think about creating a 10X team. We proudly promote our top performers and bonus them, but what about promoting and bonusing our top teams? How often does that happen? Many tech leaders don’t think enough about: How to cultivate team chemistry 🧪 What good team health looks like 👩⚕️ Motivating teams in the right way 🏃 Incentivizing and rewarding teams 🏆 Measuring team ROI & value creation 💰 Identifying team-to-team blockers 🚫 Amplifying team impact 🎯 Measuring individual success is important but designing metrics & incentive systems that measure team success may be more critical. We should want superstars, but we should want superstar teams even more. 🦸 I discuss this topic with Matt Zacks in the latest episode of the Technocratic Podcast. #podcast #technocratic #cto

Most CTOs have heard the saying, “you ship your org chart,” but what does that really mean and how can this be used for our benefit? First, here’s a quick way to understand it: - Silos in your team lead to siloed products - Unclear roles result in gaps in your product - Overwhelmed leaders produce unfocused products - Overly complex team structures result in over-engineered products - Lack of innovation focus makes products fail to stand out - Slow communication creates disjointed products - Under-resourced QA leads to buggy products So clearly the quality of your org chart impacts the quality of your product. To use this for your benefit you must constantly optimize your team & org design: - Factor in the size, type, complexity of your platforms & products - Deeply understand budget & flexibility in spend / investments - Bottleneck identification on an ongoing basis is key for this - Understand the norms in your industry / market & company - Use best practice org design ratios On this last point I’ve written a deep dive into 9 key ratios for CTOs. This can be anything from managers to teams, devs to QA, or cloudops to server infrastructure. With the right understanding of best practice ratios CTOs have a useful tool with which to design their organization for maximum performance. Have a read here: https://lnkd.in/eqzCvWbj And let me know what ratios you use when designing your engineering & product teams. #cto #technocratic #ratios

What is a common mistake that new engineering VPs make? The answer might surprise you. It sounds counter-intuitive but one of the worst mistakes a new VPE can make is to be overly strategic. If a top VP spends all of their time in an ivory tower thinking “big thoughts” instead of diving in with their team and solving problems they won’t be effective. This is the opposite mindset of many 1st time VPEs who often think getting the title equates to 90% strategy & 10% tactical - but it’s the exact opposite (at least initially). Here’s why: → No business is hiring a VP to only think strategically; they want problems fixed → You’re not the CTO, yet 🙂 → Your team needs obstacle removal which will take up a large chunk of your time → If you sit in your ivory tower you won’t have a bottoms-up understanding of the business → Being overly strategic will create a communication barrier with your teams who are focused on the more tactical work You get the picture. Being too strategic is a thing for new VPEs and you should try to avoid it. Of course, it’s possible to take this too far by being too tactical. You have to maintain a healthy balance. I discuss this topic with Matt Zacks on an upcoming episode of the Technocratic podcast. Check out a clip below: #technocratic #cto #leadership

“Building a dev team offshore is one of the most difficult things a CTO can do.” “It takes an incredible amount of effort to do it from scratch. And getting the team to perform at a high level is a different challenge entirely.'' In today’s episode we have Norm Crandall, 2x VP of Engineering at Paymerang and Corpay. — Learn the ins and outs of going offshore as a tech leader: → Strategies for selecting the right offshore location and partner → Setting up the infrastructure and processes to ensure success → Overcoming cultural and communication barriers → Measuring and improving performance in offshore teams → Avoiding common pitfalls that derail offshore initiatives Check out the full episode for more: https://lnkd.in/eG3kYciG #cto #leadership #technocratic

I know switching from leading Engineering to running Product is much harder than it looks…but people do it anyway. Why? Probably gluttons for punishment. 😃 But how do the leaders that succeed do it? 7 observations below: 1. They have a definitive “why” behind the switch 2. They study Product deeply & don’t take the discipline for granted 3. They have a strong network of product leaders to lean on 4. They find the right company to make the switch with 5. They develop a plan for themselves 6. They listen more than talk when they finally take on the role 7. They have clarity in terms of what success looks like in year 1 I dive into all of these & more in my latest newsletter: “Switch from Engineering to Product Leadership”. (https://lnkd.in/ejDWkV_V) This should help VPs of Engineering thinking about making the switch. #technocratic #product #engineeering

One of the key challenges for a CTO when landing at a new company is dealing with cowboy development. 🐎 Cowboy development means minimal process, lax standards and a strong dose of ad hoc technical decision making. In these organizations engineering is empowered to move fast but often at the expense of quality, tech debt, security and all the things that make for an enterprise-class operation. It’s actually much harder than it looks to professionalize a team like this and move them to a more agile development approach. Here are a few things to consider if you’re faced with this situation: ⏰ Figure out how much time you have to turn things around — this is critical. 🤷 Decide if you want to attempt the transformation with the current resources or start fresh. 🛠 This will be an effort mainly in change management, NOT tech, so sharpen those skills. 🩹 Don’t rip the bandaid — introduce Agile in an Agile way (if you have enough time). 🎓 The best educator for your team is doing things. Don’t waste time discussing the theoretical. 🏆 Like all such initiatives look for quick wins to build momentum (like fixing obvious process bottlenecks). 🏓 Culture is the x-factor. If the culture surrounding the team isn’t well aligned you’ll never escape cowboy development. I talk about all of this and more with Lesley Jordan, ex-Microsoft GM and CTO/CPO. I met Les during a grueling interview process where he stood out as the one executive who nailed every single question and invented some of his own! 😃. He’s a true rockstar and has lots of wisdom to offer from his years in tech working at both large and small organizations. Check him out on the latest Technocratic podcast: https://lnkd.in/g3a45bQS #technocratic #podcast #cto

Epic fail? Good. Now watch me turn it into a win. Top leaders don’t just survive failure—they dominate it. They see disaster coming before anyone else does. They plan for it, pivot like pros, and rewrite the narrative so powerfully that failure looks like a strategic move. Here’s the truth: every bold idea comes with at least a 10% chance of disaster. The best leaders don’t waste time avoiding it—they prepare for it. They know what will break, who might push back, and how to turn the fallout into fuel. Damage control isn’t a backup plan—it’s an art form. It’s how you keep the momentum, rally your team, and walk out of the fire stronger than ever. The difference between average and extraordinary? How you handle the mess. Fail forward, fail smart, and fail like a leader. Ready to learn how? Dive into Part 2. This is where legends are made. https://lnkd.in/eAhuHgQH #technocratic #cto #leadership

We’ve all heard the term “IoT” at some point or another and probably wondered, "what does that mean, anyway?” “Isn’t that when your fridge automatically orders milk when you’re running low?” Yeah, something like that. IoT (Internet of Things) is an umbrella term for internet-connected devices that all talk to each other to help get work done for you. And this sector is getting more and more impactful on the world as the underlying technologies become more capable of doing useful things. - IoT is getting huge in HealthTech. The Apple Watch is a consumer example. Patient monitoring devices in hospitals that text doctors is more of an enterprise use-case. - IoT in logistics and warehouse management is going bonkers right now. Boxes in warehouses all have chips that tell robots where they can be picked up & dropped off. - IoT that helps the environment also continues to grow rapidly — smart thermostats to optimize home energy consumption, for example. - IoT is everywhere in farming where smart devices deliver just the right amount of water and nutrients, boosting harvests while slashing waste. What’s super-charging IoT these days is advances in data science & machine learning. It’s made devices 10x “smarter” and more useful than they were even 5 years ago. It’s an interesting segment to look at from an investment standpoint. However, challenges do exist, like security and privacy, which is complex to solve when you have millions or even billions of connected devices. The recent chip shortage didn’t help IoT either. My friend Hugo Borda is a passionate advocate & researcher in IoT. He joins us in his second stint on the Technocratic podcast & gives great insights into the sector. #iot #technocratic

Have you noticed how some execs will make huge mistakes but still somehow come out unscathed? It’s not just luck or charisma — its the art of damage control and they’re very good at it. Failure is inevitable in leadership. Decisions are made with imperfect information, risks don’t always pay off, and sometimes, things just go wrong. But managing the actual impact of failure is where the real art is. There are a bunch of ingredients that go into doing this really well, including: - Predicting your own failure well before it happens - Designing multiple fixes & solutions before they’re even needed - Lining up your allies & identifying the challenging parties - Nailing down your plan B, C, D, etc - Designing a narrative that transforms failure into opportunity “Teflon” leaders (as I call them) are well-versed with these strategies as well as several more (which I’ll cover in the newsletter article). To the outside world, these leaders deploy failure mitigation strategies almost effortlessly. But it’s really just a skill developed through sheer practice. Teflon leaders have failed so many times that they know how to get out of a jam better than almost anyone. Their mindset is that failure will happen but that losing is completely in their control. They have a knack for turning setbacks into stepping stones. To them mistakes aren’t the end of the story; they’re the beginning of a comeback. I deep-dive on this topic here: https://lnkd.in/eUhSrPNH #technocratic #teflon #exec

There’s an untapped source of productivity and improved outcomes from product & engineering organizations and it’s mostly ignored. More companies should invest in improving & maintaining the mental health of their teams, and the results can be substantial. Here are simple strategies for leaders & companies to optimize for this: - Foster increased human connection > get engineers out from behind the screen from time-to-time and talking to their peers - Better manage the workload of engineers; overloading with projects & tasks ruins engineering productivity & happiness - Manage the energy of the team better; find the best times to give engineers rest & recovery…this can be massive - Keep reinforcing the “why” behind big company goals and strategies; keep the engineers connected to the business - Listen much more to engineers, it can make a big difference when they feel heard; doesn’t mean every idea has to get green-lit - Run better surveys & have better 1:1’s to figure out who needs support and who’s doing fine; not enough managers are good at this - Recognition is a big deal for anyone including engineers; where is the president’s club equivalent for dev teams? - One of the biggest things companies and leaders can do to help engineering mental health is to offer them coaching on communication; this can be work/life changing Building top-flight engineering teams is a tough job but I think getting there involves doing at least some of the above. Without these strategies you’re leaving an entire dimension of your team unaddressed. And if done right this can build a very strong culture. Check out my deep-dive here: https://lnkd.in/e4Hy-WA2 And subscribe to Technocratic here: https://lnkd.in/ednr7-Tn #technocratic #mentalhealth #engineering