Author: Adam Axelrod
Building Effective Strategy
We present the essential components of developing and communicating a strategy in engineering management, emphasize the need for strategies to be documented, measurable, and aligned with business needs. We share the importance of having a strategy as an engineering manager aspiring to drive change and innovation. We emphasize the need for a clear vision, meaningful goals tied to business value, and continuous iteration. We stress the importance of buy-in in the success of a strategy, highlighting the need for the team to be fully supportive of the strategy, as well as the importance of obtaining buy-in from higher management. Finally, we provide a detailed checklist to allow engineering managers developing a well-aligned and challenging yet achievable strategy, covering aspects such as building a strong foundation, aligning with business goals, leveraging lateral relationships, and maintaining effective communication with stakeholders.
Tim Wenzel: Building Exceptional Teams
We are featuring a guest, Tim Wenzel, who is a Silicon Valley native, expert in recruiting, including building early teams and PayPal and Tesla, and a founder and an executive recruiter at The (A)Lyst Group. Tim shares practical recommendations on feedback, candidate experience, and building teams in dynamic startup environments. In the end, Tim shares a checklist that our listeners can start using today to build exceptional teams.
Cultivating Trust
We dive deep into the importance of trust in engineering management, and how it impacts productivity. We share that trust is built and reinforced over time. We highlight the different layers of trust, including organizational, team, and individual trust, and emphasize the need for consistency and building trust through actions. We explore the subtle distinction between expectations and trust. We also discuss the emotional toll of mistrust caused by broken trust. In the end we provide a checklist that allows our listeners to start cultivating trust in their organizations.
Managing Innovation
We offer an effective way of introducing innovation to an engineering team and getting results regardless of the organization size. In the end we offer an actionable checklist that engineering managers can use to start innovating today.
Building Managers: Now That You Are A Manager
Wrapping up the ‘becoming a manger series’ with guidance and steps on what new engineering managers can do once their training completes and they are now officially a manager. Guidance includes: managing introductions and the first couple of weeks; planning your first 30-60-90 days; setting up foundational meetings like 1-on-1s; building key lateral relationships; creating space for the team to get to know you and your plan.
Building Managers: Building a Success Strategy
We share how to build a success-oriented strategy by taking care of four management pillars, organization, people, product, processes and tools.
Building Managers: Leading From The Back, Leading From The Front
We share what the role of the engineering leader means and how to approach leading from both the front and the back.
Building Managers: The Right Motivation
We share the key reasons and motivators for pursuing a engineering leadership position. Before you take on transitioning someone's or your own career to engineering management, check if you have the right motivations and strengths needed to take on the role.
Building Teams: The Kudos Program
We provide a practical guidance on how to build engaged teams by implementing a Kudos program. In the end we share a checklist that engineering managers can use to implement the Kudos program immediately
Building Teams: Birthdays and Lunches
We provide recommendations on two powerful yet easy to implement approaches to maintain the human connections and the spirit of camaraderie in a team, celebrating birthdays and going to lunches. This is the first episode in the series dedicated to the most important activity any engineering manager is responsible for, building and maintaining effective teams.