Reflections from the valley

So, I took a new role

It has now been 3 months since I took on a new - and supposedly temporary - role in my company as the Technical Lead of a distressed product. That means 3 months of dealing with fires, sudden and random issues, and loose accusations (which are not unfounded, to be fair), and all with a relatively young team which did not build the product originally. That also meant 3 months of working longer hours in office, and then being glued to my phone at home.

I don’t think I’ve slept well for 3 months, even while on vacation. Even my Senior Engineer scolded me for working too much.

The project is now… less distress, shall we say. The team is definitely less distressed, and it shows in their mood (and I also hear good things from HR on this front). We’ve managed to push out a hotfix which has addressed all blockers, and most high priority issues are resolved, with a backlog of bugs to be tackled progressively. And all this despite getting hit with undiscovered issues every 2 weeks.

Perhaps more importantly, the noise from the top has reduced significantly. There is pressure, of course, but they now seem to understand that whatever went wrong, went wrong a long time ago, and we are now addressing the mistakes of the past.

I guess my involvement did move the needle on something. Perhaps most memorably, my Senior QA commented that another distressed project needed another of me.

So it’s definitely been a ride, and I thought it would be good for me to reflect on what I’ve learned while it’s still fresh.

The things I knew, and which proved correct

I’ve been thinking about leadership for years now, but mostly in the context of ministry. This is markedly different from the corporate world, and yet very similar.

Here are some principles or frameworks which I found to be useful

Culture eats strategy for breakfast

This is a famous misquote (many sources attribute it to Peter Drucker, but the Drucker Institute says he never did). I’ve been deep in the weeds of leadership thinking and organizational transformation for a few years now, and in my experience this is entirely true.

The key need of the hour wasn’t implement Agile - this is really just a nice way to justify actions - but to implement a culture shift by setting operational principles. There are many possible principles to choose from, and none are wrong, only fitting or ill-fitting.

Tuckman’s stages of group development

I learned this framework some years ago from my ministry mentor, and it helped to see where the team is at. Clearly, they were past the Forming stage, but they were very much in the Storming stage. It’s possible to say the previous team was Norming or Performing before, but the new team was definitely not Norming yet.

The direction for me as a manager was pretty clear here. Get them to Norming ASAP.

OODA loop

I was reminded (in a martial arts class, no less), of the OODA loop. More importantly, that the first thing to do is never to decide or act, but to look around.

That’s not to say action should be slow, but uninformed action is just flailing. Maybe you hit the right thing, but most likely you hit yourself.

The things I didn’t really know, but now have experienced

Signal-to-noise ratio

I think I came across this most comprehensively in a Diary of a CEO podcast with Kevin O’Leary. It mentioned that founders like Steve Jobs were 80% signal, 20% noise, and how important this was to the success of their venture.

This was really key for me. When I first took a look at the project, I was really overwhelmed. There were thousands of Jira tickets in almost total disarray, and hundreds were highest priority.

Never waste a good crisis

My manager said this a couple of times, and I think it sunk in without my being fully aware. The idea is simply that chaos is not total disaster. If you can leverage a challenging situation, we can gain from it.

This was pretty useful, especially when I was already starting to wonder how I would grow in this organization (small and flat means a lot of stagnation in roles), and allowed me to gain negotiating leverage. My HR manager called it my ‘debut’.

Sparkle Jazz hands Sparkle

As I walk through the valley…

My faith continues to be a big part of my life, and therefore my work. All the more so as I move further into management roles and away from IC roles (which I will sorely miss, I’m sure). And perhaps fittingly my vision for Career is shifting toward building systems rather than things, and enabling others to bless at scale, rather than blessing people.

I am tired. But I am also hopeful, and I think this hope keeps me in good stead as I walk through this valley.