I’ve had the uncommon pleasure in my career of reporting into five different VPs of Engineering that were women and, as a result, learned to appreciate an experience that was different from most working in high-tech. In now my third role as VP of Engineering, I continue to appreciative the lessons and mentoring I received… Read More
Applying the Talent Code
In Daniel Coyle’s book The Talent Code, he explains how deep learning can occur through doing multiple short repetitions with immediate feedback to build myelin along the neural pathways as we learn and I realized that I have applied this approach in coaching sports as well as in business for years. An interview with Tim Ferriss… Read More
The Root Cause of a 10x Engineer
There has been much discussion about the “10x engineer” and whether they exist in this galaxy or are illusive unicorns – creatures of our imagination and fairy tales. People who have been in the industry for a while, especially in high growth and highly successful companies swear they have seen them. Having worked at various… Read More
Where to Begin the Journey?
When a new person joins your team, the first impression you make on them sets the foundation for the rest of your journey together. Before you impress upon them your intentions and objectives as a leader, you should first establish with yourself what you believe to be the foundation of such as relationship. As a… Read More
The Confidence Villains
As leaders seeking to succeed in business,sports or the classroom it is key to find, inspire and develop people to be confident with a mindset to persevere in the face of uncertainty and adversity and ultimately derive energy from the challenge. After completing Katty Kay’s and Claire Shipman’s inspirational book The Confidence Code, I was… Read More
The Room Where it Happens
As leaders, much of the magic happens in the one-on-one conversations either in the privacy of a physical of virtual room (think Skype or Zoom) or on a walk-about as a more neutral setting and where you also benefit from the energy of being in Motion. These conversations should sometimes be as non-threatening as a… Read More
Meaningful Feedback Conversations
There has been a fair amount of talk about how effective leaders should use “Radical Candor” in feedback conversation since Kin Scott published Radical Candor – Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. In my experience, doing so requires four things: Establish a relationship of trust The journey should begin in all cases by… Read More
Vectors of Influence
In helping leaders manage the dynamics of teams navigating the uncertainty in the market or new approaches in the work-place, it is not uncommon for them to be confronted with team members having differences of opinion. In fact, to arrive at the best solutions, there is a lot of value in fostering discussions based on… Read More
So, you want to be a manager
In developing talent within an organization, there are times where an individual contributor , often one that has excelled as an engineer, may be interested in becoming a manager. Naturally, we want our employees to develop and grow and explore unknowns in their careers, and we want them to set them up for success in… Read More
The Confidence Villains (Continued)
This is a follow-up post I’d written after completing the inspirational book The Confidence Code. For the original post see: The Confidence Villains. At the office: Management can instill confidence or rob it. I discovered the importance of leaders that recognize that as a quality while working at Intuit as Brad Smith pulled me aside after… Read More
Goldilocks and the Six Chairs
There’s a coaching exercise that CTI teaches where they divide the floor into 8 sections with tape. The idea is you think of the problem or topic at being in the center and each of the sections being a different metaphor for a perspective that you put yourself into and ask your self how would… Read More
Different Stokes for Different Folks
My high school history teacher Mr. Hupert always used to say “different strokes fo different folks” in explaining how under different circumstances in different times with different people, different forms of government were effective. So, too, I discovered, it is with effective software development methodologies. When I joined IMVU, we were continuously deploying to our… Read More
Handling Interrupts
For any team that is responsible for existing systems that are already in use while also iterating on those systems to enhance and/or improve them there is also typically the burden of interrupts from the existing system. Forward progress is best made with concentrated effort that is focused and uninterrupted. How does one balance these… Read More
Data: Trust but Verify
In his book, The Lean Startup, Eric Ries writes about the processes we used at IMVU to get Minimal Viable Products out there as experiments to observe the customer adoption as the prototypical Lean Startup. I stepped in after Eric went off to evangelize Lean Startup principles to the industry. I remember an experiment we… Read More
Lean Staffing – It’s about the People
In his insightful book The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Eric Ries speaks of his startup lessons learned at IMVU and from many other companies he came to know afterwards including Intuit. In The Lean Startup and also his more recent book, The Leader’s Guide, Eric focuses… Read More
Leave a Trace – Spinning Up
How to Spin Up New Hires On my first day at IMVU, as with anyone joining engineering, the expectation was to make a change and push it to production on my first day. There are a few objectives with doing that… It verifies that everything was set up right in terms of your system, accounts… Read More
Making Rules
My first early childhood education exercise was to go to a pre-school where a teacher was having particular trouble with three very disruptive boys she could not get under control. She hoped just to get a day of relief by having me take them for the day. I approached the boys and told them that… Read More
Building Collaborative Groups with Broken Squares
In his book The Culture Code – The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups, Daniel Coyle refers to a competition at Stanford where business students in university squared off against kindergartners. The four-person teams had to beat the clock and build a tower using uncooked spaghetti, tape and string with a marshmallow on top. You would… Read More
Heart Rate Meditation
There can many advantages for mind, body and soul to being able to calm oneself to be more present and aware when trying to notice opportunities previously overlooked. Much of the guidance on meditation starts with focusing on the breath. I found it to be more effective to focus on the heart in a way… Read More