5 Lessons from Guy Kawasaki’s “Think Remarkable” for Engineering Managers

I follow Guy Kawasaki since his presentation The Top 10 Mistakes of Entrepreneurs at Berkeley in 2011. This is a direct quote from his presentation:

This bozo is reading his slides, this bozo is reading verbatim.
I can read silently to myself faster than this bozo can read them to me.
I will just read ahead, okay?

Pretty dense use of the word bozo right? It was the first time I heard the term “bozo” as a non-native speaker.

bozo — noun / (bo·​zo ˈbō-(ˌ)zō ) / plural: bozos
: a foolish or incompetent person

He can back up the usage of terms like bozo with a proven track record in tech (e.g. working together with Steve jobs). The way Guy Kawasaki presents and also gives you an insight behind the scenes of Silicon Valley impresses me since I discovered him more than 10 years ago.

Today, he is about to release his new book called Think Remarkable. If you pre-order it you will get access to the digital version. It’s a treasure trove of lessons for your professional and personal life — highly recommended!

I curated the 5 most important lessons for you as an engineering manager:

Foster a Growth Mindset

Cultivate a growth mindset within your team. This means viewing challenges not as barriers but as opportunities for learning and growth.

You should create an environment that values experimentation, risk-taking, and ongoing improvement. By embracing this approach, you can lead your team to become more resilient, innovative, and adaptable, equipping them to tackle any challenge and achieve remarkable success.

The same is true for yourself. Stop telling yourself you can’t accomplish something and don’t wait for anyone’s permission.

• Want to become a mentor? Do it!
• Want to moderate the All Hands? Do it!

Just deciding to do it is already halfway there.
Of course you still need to put in the work to become a mentor or an All-Hands host, but this will lead you on a journey of finding support, embracing change and going farther than you thought.

Trust the process

Value the journey of growth and innovation. Guy uses the metaphor of planting acorns and nurturing oak trees to describe trusting the process.

Growing an oak tree takes collecting the acorns, preparing the seeds, planting them, tending the tree and finally waiting. It is as simple to describe as it is difficult to accomplish.

The same is true for helping engineers grow and shaping your own path as an engineering manager. You encourage your team to try different things and work on many types of projects. Not everything will work out right away, but every experience helps them become stronger and more skilled.

Time passes and they look back to their first commit from a mountain of accomplished complex projects.

Your journey as a leader is also like growing a tree. It involves coming up with new ideas, helping your team improve, and patiently waiting to see the results of your hard work.

Just like an oak tree needs time and the right conditions to grow, becoming a great leader and helping your engineers succeed takes time, learning from mistakes, and sticking with it through ups and downs.

Trusting this process means understanding that growth doesn’t always happen when or how we expect it.

By staying committed to helping your team and yourself improve over time, you’ll build a strong team of engineers and a lasting impact as a leader, much like an oak stands strong for years.

Execution, Execution, Execution

The true measure of an idea’s worth lies in its execution.
Moving beyond the initial excitement of a “Eureka” moment requires not just creativity but also rigorous planning, strategic execution, and continuous effort.

It’s your role to guide your team from ideation to realization, ensuring that goals are formalized, plans are actionable, and every member’s daily efforts contribute towards creating impactful, tangible results.

By fostering an environment that values this process and equips your team with the tools and mindset needed for successful execution, you’ll lead them towards achieving truly remarkable outcomes.

The balance between planning and execution is crucial when it comes to implementing new features or improvements. While thorough planning is essential, it’s important not to get stuck in the planning phase, also known as “analysis paralysis”, where too much time is spent on planning and not enough on doing.

This can prevent great ideas from ever seeing the light of day. On the other hand, rushing into execution without enough planning can lead to overlooked details and costly mistakes.

For example, imagine your team wants to implement a new algorithm to speed up data processing:

Spending months debating every possible approach without starting any preliminary coding or testing can stall progress. Conversely, jumping straight into coding without a clear plan might result in a solution that doesn’t integrate well with existing systems or meet user needs.

The key is to find the right balance: Enough planning to feel confident in the direction and potential success of the project, but with a strong emphasis on moving into action to test, refine, and deploy the solution efficiently.

This approach ensures that innovative projects are not only well thought out but also brought to fruition in a timely and effective manner, maximizing their impact and value.

Perfect your 30-Second Wow Pitch

Master the art of pitching your team’s vision & mission and inspire belief in your team’s innovations.

This involves not just developing innovative features but also effectively communicating their value, engaging potential supporters, and navigating challenges with resilience.

Start crafting your “30-Second Wow Pitch”. This pitch should be able to show what you can do so you don’t need to explain what you can do. That means showing the most impactful projects your team worked on in less than 30 seconds.

Examples could be your checkout performance improvement project that led to a 5% increase in conversion rate or an overhaul of the search UI that resulted in an increase of 10% top funnel traffic.

It’s Important that you can either visualize your success through naked numbers or even better: Through something the other person can actually look at.

Taking the example of the Search UI overhaul: It’s crucial that you don’t have to open your app, enter text for a search, be in the right cohort etc.. to show it. Take a video of the UI interactions that are crucial and innovative and keep it as a favorite in your phone / Laptop. This way you are ready to go within seconds to show what your team can do.

You might ask: “Leon, I’m managing an Infrastructure team, why would I need that?”
Let me tell you that this will help you in the future when you ask for more headcount, pay raise for your team members or support of a critical project.

Help others succeed

Do you want to get positive feelings, increased energy, and increased self-esteem?

Guy shares the concept of the “helper’s high” that results in exactly that when helping others. Helping others is not just resulting in you feeling better but also has a tremendous impact on your career.

Doing it will always come back to you. The people you help could be your team members, other engineering managers, your mentee(s) or your own manager.

Ways how this can come back to you positively:

• A former team member that switched companies is recommending you as a hire to their new company
• Another Engineering Manager sees an opportunity for you or your team and points directly to you
• You give your mentee a good advice and they share it with their manager which results in more visibility especially if your mentee is part of another organization
• Taking work off your manager’s plate will not just result in you getting good feedback but also staying top of mind when promotion time comes around (or layoff time)

Always having the “how can I help others succeed” mindset is good for you and others and will get you ahead in the long run.

Bonus: Managing Up and Down

Think Remarkable has a section about how to over deliver and why it’s important. So I take a page (more a bullet point) out of the book and do more than expected with this sixth lesson: Managing Up and Down.

As an engineering manager, it’s really important to know how to work well with both your manager and your team. Here’s a guide on how you can do a great job managing up to make your manager happy and managing down to support your team’s success.

Managing Up:

• Make your manager look good: As an engineering manager, ensure your team’s achievements are aligned with your manager’s goals, highlighting how your team’s work contributes to overall organizational success.
• Make yourself indispensable: Demonstrate your unique value by leading innovative projects and initiatives that address critical business challenges, making your role crucial to the company.
• Bring solutions, not problems and questions: Approach your manager with well-thought-out solutions to issues your team faces, showcasing your proactive problem-solving skills.

Managing Down:

• Empower people to do great work: Provide your team with the resources, guidance, and autonomy they need to innovate and excel in their projects.
• Get out of their way: Once you’ve set clear goals and expectations, trust your team to execute their tasks without micromanaging, allowing creativity and productivity to flourish. (Read more about it in my guide to autonomy for Engineering Managers)
• Don’t ask employees to do anything that you wouldn’t do: Cultivate a team environment rooted in mutual respect by setting reasonable expectations and refraining from assigning tasks that fall outside the team’s responsibility or are unfairly demanding. That shows you’re a fair and honest leader.

Want to learn more?

These lessons are just a glimpse into the wisdom the book Think Remarkable provides.

Having read Guy’s previous books it feels like a knowledge compilation of all his previous books in one. Did you know Guy Kawasaki before reading this story and what did you read/watch from him?

Fun fact: Guy Kawasaki is on Medium but hasn’t published a story yet.

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