What I (We) Believe In – 9+ Key Strategies for Emerging Technologists, Entrepreneurs, and Leaders
In today’s fast-paced business world, emerging technologists, entrepreneurs, and leaders need a strong foundation to succeed in their organizations and teams. With this in mind, I’ve compiled a toolbox of 9+ key strategies that will help you achieve your goals. These strategies guide you towards success in an effective and sustainable way.
1. Product, Engineering, and Ops Excellence
Prioritizing product, software, and hardware development lifecycles (PDLC, SDLC, HDLC) rigor and related best practices is key to achieving success in any organization. These practices ensure the integration of product design, development, quality, and security. To stay ahead of the curve in your industry, prioritize innovation and dedicate resources to research and development. Encourage collaboration and communication within your organization by breaking down silos and encouraging cross-functional teams. By prioritizing these practices, you can ensure the quality of the products and services you deliver to your customers and position your organization for long-term success.
2. Continuous Delivery of Value
Focus on delivering value through iterative development and improvement to achieve success. Adopt Agile and Lean practices for frequent software delivery. Implement DevOps and DevSecOps (short for development, security, and operations) practices for faster and more reliable software delivery. Foster a customer-centric mindset by regularly seeking feedback and incorporating it into product development. Prioritize value delivery and continuous improvement to establish a strong foundation for success and growth. By continuously improving the way of working, teams can achieve better results and stay ahead of the competition.
3. Small, High-Performing Teams
To promote high performance, create small teams with clear goals, roles, and responsibilities. This helps streamline the workflow and empowers team members to prioritize customer needs. Regular check-ins and milestones keep teams accountable and on track. Support, resources, and autonomy are crucial for maximizing performance and fostering a sense of ownership and accountability. Cultivating a high-performance culture leads to greater productivity and job satisfaction, driving success and growth.
4. Aligned Vision, Strategy, and Focus
Having a clear and inspiring vision, as well as a flexible and adaptable strategy based on a thorough analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT), is important to ensure organizational alignment. Aligning key elements such as mission, vision, values, principles, and strategic priorities can be achieved by framing priorities as strategic and operational programs and roadmaps, using objectives and key results (OKRs), key performance indicators (KPIs), and key initiatives (OKIs) to align team-level goals. To maintain relevance, regularly review and adjust these elements by tracking industry trends and performance, seeking feedback from stakeholders, and continuously refining and improving the organization’s key elements for long-term success.
5. Close Commercial Partnerships
Developing close commercial partnerships is important to achieving success in any organization. Establish shared business goals and financial outcomes to ensure everyone is working towards the same objectives. Hold regular partner or stakeholder syncs to discuss progress, share updates, and identify issues. Identify complementary strengths to ensure everyone contributes their best work. Creating win/win strategic opportunities leads to better outcomes, a positive and collaborative working environment, and long-term commercial success.
6. Culture of Growth Mindset
Foster growth and development by driving your own career goals and development. Set clear individual development objectives and key results (OKRs), and seek opportunities for growth and mastery. Embrace change, take risks, and seek new opportunities to learn and improve. Take ownership of your growth by seeking feedback, setting ambitious goals, and pushing yourself. Use individual growth plans and career leveling guidelines to align and motivate your team. Regularly assess your skills and performance to identify areas for improvement and develop new capabilities.
7. Leadership as a Skill
To be an effective leader, focus on leadership as a skill and understand different leadership styles. Transformational leadership inspires and motivates employees towards a common goal. Servant leadership focuses on the team’s needs and encourages collaboration. Situational leadership involves adapting your style to suit the situation. Enable and empower employees by providing resources and support they need to be successful. Learning through mentorship is key. Utilize internal and external coaching to develop new skills. Encourage sharing ideas and feedback to enhance leadership learning and growth.
8. Be #SCRIPTful & #KISS-it!
Ensure clear communication and focus in your organization by focusing on two key aspects. First, be #SCRIPTful: be supportive, constructive, respectful, inspiring, positive, and trustful. Offer helpful feedback, set a good example, and be honest and reliable. Second, #KISS-it: keep it simple! Avoid complicating things unnecessarily to ensure everyone understands what’s being communicated. Additionally, have an empowering and safe mission, culture, and values to ensure everyone is working towards the same goals. Use feedback loops to understand progress and identify areas for improvement. By focusing on these aspects of clear communication, everyone in your organization can be aligned and work towards common goals.
9. #AlwaysBeLearning+Sharing!
Foster a culture of growth and innovation by focusing on continuous learning and sharing. Encourage creativity, experimentation, and risk-taking by thinking outside the box and trying new things. Invest in demos, lunch and learns, workshops, seminars, and mentorship opportunities. Attend and host conferences and networking events to stay up to date with the latest trends and technologies. Establish a board(s) of advisors to leverage strategic and situation guidance and advice. Identify your organizational northstars to guide decision-making and direction. By prioritizing continuous learning and sharing, you can align everyone’s efforts towards a common goal, driving motivation and engagement for a constantly improving organization.
By following these key strategies outlined in this blog post, you can achieve success as an emerging technologist, entrepreneur, or leader. Remember, success is not an overnight journey, but rather a continuous effort towards improvement. Keep pushing forward and never stop learning and growing.
In future posts, I will explore specific strategies and techniques for transformational and situational leadership. Additionally, I will share my unique perspectives and experiences on a variety of other related topics.
If you found this post helpful or informative, please give it a 👏 clap and follow along #MySCRIPT journey to show your support! 🙌
PS: Feel free to reach out online and/or book a 1–1 with me!
Check out these good reads:
- Accelerate by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim: This book focuses on how to measure and improve software delivery performance.
- Continuous Delivery by Jez Humble and David Farley: This book focuses on how to continuously deliver value to customers.
- The DevOps Handbook by Gene Kim, Jez Humble, Patrick Debois, and John Willis: This book focuses on how to implement DevOps in an organization.
- Drive by Daniel H. Pink: This book focuses on what motivates people to do their best work.
- High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove: This book focuses on how to manage teams and organizations effectively.
- The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen: This book focuses on how successful companies can be disrupted by new technologies.
- The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen: This book focuses on how to build products that customers love.
- The Lean Startup by Eric Ries: This book focuses on how to create a successful startup using lean principles.
- The Manager’s Path by Camille Fournier: This book focuses on how to grow and develop as a manager.
- The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford: This book focuses on how to implement DevOps in an organization.
- Radical Candor by Kim Scott: This book focuses on how to give feedback effectively and build strong relationships with team members.
- Rework with Google: This site focuses on people operations and how to build and cultivate successful teams.
- Shape Up by Ryan Singer: This book focuses on how to build products that solve real problems.
- The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker: This book focuses on how to build a culture of continuous improvement.
