Leadership pipeline for Technologies

Scott Francis

Robert Half

DeveloperWeek – San Francisco

February 10, 2014

Personal Development & Team Composition

for Innovation & Growth

PROMISE FOR THIS SESSION

By spending your time in this session, you will learn about

how to develop your own career, build an effective and

stable team, and deliver top results for many years

through an understanding of leadership.

PRINCIPLES

In this talk, I will present ideas from The Leadership

Pipeline, peppered with my own experience and other

anecdotes, in a structured format leading from individual

contributor to CEO or CTO.

TACTICS

At each level, I will discuss the key behaviors that must

be mastered followed by the changes needed to make it

to the next level.

PULL

• Great for software development

• Lousy for teams

• Why

• Lead time to find personnel

• Time for productivity of those personnel (business context)

PIPELINE | SKILL BEFORE NEED

If it’s hard to get the people we need, then we need to develop our own

Skill acquisition is straightforward, what is often overlooked is leadership

• Doesn’t just mean managing people

• Anyone with an idea who motivates other is a leader

Leadership is a skill that can be developed, but the resources are more limited

• For a long-lived enterprise, need a practice to develop those leaders

• For the short-lived effort, need a model to understand how to build a team

The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company, Charan, Drotter, Noel

http://www.amazon.com/The-Leadership-Pipeline-Powered-Company/dp/0470894563

LEVEL 0 1 | SELF OTHERS

Key Behavior: Getting work done through others

Skills

• Communications

• Set short & long term goals

• Conflict resolution

• Delegation

TECHNICAL

Key: Stop being super-coder and start organizing others

Skills

• Decomposing User Stories into Tasks

• Prioritize and Prune Efforts in alignment with business

• Surface issues early

0 1 | SKILLS

COMMUNICATIONS

Understand your own style, world-view, and preferences

• Others may have different styles, views…

• Can you anticipate them?

• How can you make your point clear?

• Be Proactive and think about who needs what

information

• Having difficult conversations

ORGANIZING OTHERS

Designing Tasks and Decomposing Work will become one of

your most valuable skills for the rest of your career

• Definition of Done

• Define Tasks that suit skills/capabilities

• Learning to say ‘No’ and other unpopular actions

• Discover Problems | Provide Solutions

Take time to learn your own style – understand yourself

LEVEL 1 2 | MULTIPLE PROJECTS, INDIRECT

Key Behavior: Coaching Others to Lead

Skills

• Mentoring

• Training and Selecting

• Culture Keeping

• Team Building

• Shift from Tactical to Strategic Thinking

TECHNICAL

Key: be Responsible FOR/not Responsible for DOING

Skills

• Hiring and On-Boarding New Engineers

• Maintaining Consistency of Stack

• Anticipate Problems

• Future Skills & Technologies

• Synergy of Skills and Seniority

1 2 | BEHAVIORS

CULTURE KEEPER

“It’s how we do things around here”

• Don’t be afraid to prune

MAKING TEAMS WORK & WORK WELL!

• Well Rounded Group of Lopsided Individuals

BOXING TIME

• Block time to think about personal interactions

• Your own, within the team, your peers

• To research industry, trends, competitors, tech

ASKING FOR HELP

• Lowest Intensity engagement

• Not interrogating

• Recognize (and Trust) that team may know more than you

• And that’s okay!

DELEGATION

• Critical now

• Trust or Replace

IMPORTANCE OF TEAM COMPOSITION

Self Leadership and Self-Directing Teams need

• Agreement and Commitment to the goal

• Mutual Trust & Respect

• Complementary Skills, Attitudes, Backgrounds

• Mix of Seniority

• Build the Pipeline

TOOLS

• PITI, MBTI, …

• 360 feedback

• Leadership Pipeline!

• Skills Matrix

demo.traitify.com

LEVEL 2 3 | LEADING THE FUNCTION

Key Behavior: Thinking & Leading Strategically

Skills

• Awareness/Presence beyond Enterprise

• Mapping Industry Trends to Business Advantage

• Initiating Projects to Leverage New Trends as

appropriate for business

• Deep Listening

TECHNICAL

Key: Thinking beyond current product, but be eager to listen to

concerns of contributors without bias to detect trends early

Skills

• Trade off tactical benefits for Strategic gains

• developing staff for future needs

• Trace and predict impact to business of tech trends

2 3 | THE FUNCTION

Not just making effective product, but building an

effective department, architecture, structure that the

business can use for competitive advantage

• What makes an effective group? Structure? API?

• Will the asset be effective in 9 mos? 18? 36?

• What changes need to happen?

• Tech Skills

• Capabilities Structure

ADD VALUE

• Be Wary of “Infrastructure” projects or “rewrites”

• Often covering up bias or incomplete understanding

Instead

• Look to make structure “intentional, but emergent”

• Deliver in components of improvement attached to user value

ANATOMY OF A STRATEGY

PROMISE

Start with a plain, clear statement of

the benefit of the effort

By doing <project>, we commit to

delivering <value> to <stakeholder>

Optional decorations:

• Alternatives

• Specifics of value or methods

TACTICS

What will you try to deliver the promise?

• NOT commitments

• Ideas, considerations, approaches

Reuse the payment processor

Create new API and host Hackathon to

drive usage

PRINCIPLES

What tenets will you never violate?

• Compromise security

• Sell user data

What must be included for the strategy to

be a success?

• Make use of the XYZ purchase

• Maximize use of current staff

fruITion, Chris Potts | http://www.amazon.com/fruITion-Creating-Corporate-Information-Technology-ebook/dp/B004I6E8GE

LEVEL 3 4 | LEADING BEYOND YOUR SPECIALTY

Key Behavior: Understand Core Business Process outside

functional experience area

Skills

• Time Management

• Focus on what is/will be important, not what's easy or

comfortable

• Understanding how functions, projects, and efforts

contribute to business KPIs in short and long term

• business model | how is money transformed

• justify and forecast use of funds

TECHNICAL

Key: Learn New Functions and the Value they bring

Skills

• Forget what you know/Study unfamiliar functions

• Be able to map use of funds to KPIs

• Add Back Tactical Focus

LEVEL 4 5 | ALLOCATING AMONG LOTS OF THINGS

Key Behavior: coordinating multiple models for greater

overall performance beyond the sum of parts

Skills

• Ability to understand new business models quickly

• Allocate funds to both babies and bath water

TECHNICAL

Key: Assess Relative Merits of Different Systems, Technologies

Skills

• Capabilities Assessment

• Evaluate Integration Points

• Recognize Adoption Curves and Where Projects are along

those curves

NIH | BUILD OR BUY

Early in the Pipeline Bias to Build and Confidence in Solution

is Critical to Success

• If you don’t believe, who will?

But, farther along, the bias must be consciously eschewed in

favor of analysis in terms of best way to deliver

• Core promise of Strategy

• Alignment to Competency

FEDERATE

Why not build AND buy?

• Innovate on TOP of purchased solution

Consider Vendor Perspective

• Feeding the vendor may make a better solution | continuous

improvement, benefit from multiple clients

• Possible to Leapfrog competitors using the vendor

LEVEL 5 6 | CONSIDERING THE ENTIRE PICTURE

Key Behavior: considering multiple viewpoints—most of

them external, but directing internally

Skills

• Quick, accurate decisions

• Summarize & Digest information quickly

• Confident and committed to principles

TECHNICAL

Key: Understand and Map Value to Customers, other

Stakeholders of Technical Assets and Direction

Skills

• Quickly understand integration potential of new assets

• Due Diligence Activities

KEYS TO UNDERSTANDING THE DEVELOPMENT LADDER

It’s not a ladder

• Zig-Zag path – like a tacking sailboat

At each turn or ‘tack’

• It will look and feel like you are going the other direction

• Because you are

May be ‘tops’ before the turn, but ‘bottoms’ after

You can’t skip steps

• Lookout for people who have!

Progress is made tack over tack – not directly

MAKING THE TURN

READINESS

Is someone showing

• Mastery of the current level skills

• Functioning at a high degree of competence

• Showing some ability in the next level skills

AFTER THE TURN

Expect a drop in relative competence

• Focus/coaching on the new skills

• Even to elimination or delegation of old ones

CAUTION: Watch out for ‘promotions’ that require two

levels of competence – doesn’t leave room for the growth

necessary for the new level.

USING THE PIPELINE

CURRENT STATE

• Understand who, where YOU are

• How do others perceive and process?

• What levels, skills, or other traits are missing from

your team?

FUTURE STATE

Understand what’s NEXT

• Can’t skip levels

• Demonstrate High Level of Competence at Current Level

• Develop/TRY skills for NEXT Level

CAUTION: Watch out for ‘promotions’ that require two

levels of competence – doesn’t leave room for the growth

necessary for the new level.

Leadership pipeline for Technologies

Recruiting & HR

Transcript of Leadership pipeline for Technologies