On leading leaders
A few lessons learned on the most discontinuous step of your leadership career
The details escape my mind now, but every time I make an effort to remember how the story goes, what I relive is the feeling, the visceral reaction I had when my CEO asked me to step into a management role.
I have been spectacularly unsuccessful at it in the past. Too young, too inexperienced, too full of myself. I’ve made every mistake a first-time manager makes, and then some.
I love each and every “first-time manager” story out there. They’re humorous and inspirational, and I believe we need more engineers to become leaders. But this article is about what comes next: the step you take from leading, to leading leaders. And if you are anything like me, this will likely be the most discontinuous jump you’ll make in your career.
Whether you’re trying to take this next step, or your professional situation simply puts you in this position, there are three things I know now that I wish I knew back then when I become a second-line manager.
Know your craft (and don’t forget)
You got where you are because you’re good at what you do. That was true when you became an engineering manager. It’s still true now that you’re a director. So the one thing you need to understand is that whether you are a developer, a manager or a director of engineering, you ship technology. You are not only responsible for the “on time” and the “on budget.” More importantly, you are in charge of “building it right.”
The challenge presents itself when you move from a single component, project, or product, to multiple of them. You can delegate decision-making (and you should), but you can’t be bailed out of your accountability.
You have to find a way to stay at the right level of detail for every architecture you’re in charge of. Your title cannot be more explicit: Director. If you don’t know your craft, you can’t direct. And I’m yet to find a project that has organically landed where it needed to land.
As strong as its weakest link
From day one, and every day after, you have to look at your teams, your organization, and make sure you have the right leaders managing the right teams, having the right skills, and in charge of the right scope.
You will also invest in your people. Coach them, guide them. Every leader has three types of qualities: those they are good at, and know how to teach; those they are good at, but don’t know how to teach; and those they need help with. So when you build your team, make sure you take this into consideration. Not only for the people in your organization but, more importantly, for yourself.
If organizations were static, building team would be a walk in the park. When you add the variable ‘time’ in this equation, things get complicated: priorities change, challenges emerge, things don’t go as planned. If you’re lucky enough, the learning curve of your people will match the time you and your projects have, and you’ll be able to coach them in their growth and development. If luck is not on your side, you’ll have to make the tough decisions. And it’s vital that you do. When you think about it, keeping somebody around that is not set up for success and does not have the right environment to learn is unfair to that individual and dangerous for your organization.
As a leader, continuously invest in and inspect your chain of command. As every other chain, it breaks at its weakest link.
It’s the journey, stupid
Sound execution keeps teams motivated as well as gives you “permission to play”: without it, there’s nothing else. “Right technology” is the foundation: get it right, and you’ll grow your product, business, teams; get it wrong, and you’ll risk all you’ve worked so hard for. Then, comes one of the trickier parts: “Where are we going and how do we get there?” Answers to both these questions are equally important. Moreover, they hinge on each other. It is your job to ask and answer them constantly. Every day.
Articulating a crisp vision that describes where you are going, how it feels like to be there, what new opportunities it presents, is the coordinates in a GPS. When I first started, I genuinely thought I could give these coordinates to anybody within my team, and they should be able to get there. Right? Well, it doesn’t quite work that way.
If you think about it, it’s obvious. Given a simple set of coordinates, even if you have a turn-by-turn GPS device, you still need to figure out what the terrain looks like, what type of transportation you’ll need, where are you going to stop for fuel, and food, and to rest. You’ll have to understand how seasons affect your journey, and even then, you’ll have to be ready for the unplanned. See, what started as “We need to go from San Francisco to New York” now became a whole different endeavor.
What I was missing was the narrative that will take us from where we were, to where we needed to be. This IS what sets apart a second-line from a first-line manager: the ability to articulate how each of your teams will be connecting the dots to make that vision you are collectively trying to achieve appear on the page. The very best ones have parallel narratives, constantly keeping a pulse on their teams, their leaders, and the obstacles ahead. They can not only react to roadblocks, but they also seem to stay one step ahead of the changing conditions.
Each of these three elements: technology, team, and execution strategy, have depth, layers, and density of their own. I will be writing about each of them in the future, as I have learned a few things from my clumsy upbringing as a leader. The one thing I give myself credit for, though, is the fact that I always understood that the bigger your accountability, the more ‘unfair’ the world becomes: your escalation points get reduced until they disappear, and your guidance carries more coordinates and less narrative.
It is quite fascinating: in the times of turn-by-turn directions, I cannot emphasize enough the value of the more traveled leader. If you want to advance in your career, focus on the journey. Learn the patterns. Read the signs. Get a fair share of good stories under your belt. The rest will take care of itself.
