Organic Leadership

Andrey Akselrod
Nov 5 · 4 min read
100% Organic
100% Organic

One of our engineering leaders started with the company early on as an IC (Individual Contributor). Let’s call him Joe. Less than two months passed, and one of the engineers left our then very small team; we ended up with an area of product not covered by anyone. Support, expertise and tribal knowledge of several components — all were gone with that engineer. I asked Joe to take over. He started digging into the unfamiliar codebase, getting everyone together and articulating a plan on how we would recover from this situation while delivering on our customers’ expectations. Joe organized knowledge sharing sessions, spent a ton of time writing (and reading!) code, and also hiring into the team. Joe also aligned stakeholders by communicating what was happening as well as engaging other engineers to help when it was needed. The choice to name Joe a team lead became obvious to Engineering management. Moreover, when he was officially appointed as team lead — this was no surprise to anyone — everyone on his team agreed it made perfect sense and everyone was happy with the decision.

Now, a few years later, Joe is an Engineering Director, helping shape our engineering org and growing new leaders.

This is what we call Organic Leadership.

We prefer this approach over hiring leaders from outside, “transplanting” them as managers or team leads into teams and risking our company culture and a potential “organ rejection” from the team.

Even when we hire leaders with prior management experience, we first hire them as Individual Contributors. Growing from within significantly reduces the risks outlined above. This is not for everyone, as we expect our leaders to start their careers very hands-on technically. But we think this is the best way for them to lead by example and gain the respect of the team, create a following. It sets them up for success and also creates a very tight team that is highly aligned and operates like clockwork.

When we talk about leadership, it’s not about management. To a large extent, we need every engineer to be a leader, to be capable of making decisions and driving projects. We have to move fast and operate effectively across offices and time zones — we can not be approving every single decision. Thus, being a leader is as important for senior ICs, as it is for managers.

Our career ladder reflects this with two parallel tracks — Technical Leadership and People Leadership (commonly referred to as management).

How do you get there?

Any company has numerous opportunities around you. Especially a hypergrowth company like People.ai. All you have to do is look around. What is the top objective for the quarter? What is the leadership team talking about? Does your project fit the company’s goals? What can you do to accelerate the movement in the right direction? Take true ownership and communicate status and challenges/solutions on a regular cadence. Most important of all — set the right expectations and deliver results. You’ll get recognized very quickly and accelerate your personal growth this way.

Start small. Own a small project yourself and deliver. Then find a bigger one — step up to lead a medium-size initiative, build trust with stakeholders along the way, and ensure they are always up to date with the initiative’s progress. Beat the expectations.

Startups in the hypergrowth stage are moving very fast. Once the product-market fit is achieved, new customers are on-boarded at a high rate and the company is forced to hire more and more people to support customers and build the product. Startups like this create a ton of opportunities for personal and professional growth. New areas of product ownership are becoming available fast in search of an owner; new teams are constantly being created. Processes are being built on the fly — everything requires ownership. Every initiative needs a leader. Environments like this generate opportunities one after another — you just need to seize them!

If you want to learn how to take ownership and responsibility, grow your influence and respect of the team, I highly recommend the book “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win” by Jocko Willink.

And if you want to experience Organic Leadership and grow as a leader in a hypergrowth startup — join People.ai!


Ready to start building the future? See all open opportunities by visiting: https://people.ai/careers/

People.ai Engineering

Practical Data Science, Engineering, and Product

Andrey Akselrod

Written by

CTO @ People.ai. Founder and Former CTO @Smartling. Writing great software and drinking great coffee.

People.ai Engineering

Practical Data Science, Engineering, and Product

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