An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
When I have a problem that I want to solve quickly and cheaply, I start thinking about process design. A problem I want to solve permanently and we have time to go slow? That’s a good time to evolve your culture. However, if process is too weak a force, and culture too slow, then organizational design lives between those two.
Will Larson • An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
There is a lot less competition for hard work.
Will Larson • An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
Typically, my organizational philosophy is to stabilize team-by-team and organization-by-organization. Ensuring any given area is well on the path to health before moving my focus. I try not to push risks onto teams that are functioning well. You do need to delegate some risks, but generally I think it’s best to only delegate solvable risk. If some
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By tracking your eras and transitions, you can avoid lingering in any era beyond the point when you’re developing new masteries. This will allow you to continue your personal growth even if you’re working in what some would describe as a boring, mature company. The same advice applies if you’re within a quickly growing company or startup: don’t tre
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Will Larson • An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
Figure 3.8 The expected and actual experience of presenting to executives. My general approach to presenting to senior leaders is: Tie topic to business value. One or two sentences to answer the question “Why should anyone care?” Establish historical narrative. Two to four sentences to help folks understand how things are going, how we got here, an
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A prototypical head of engineering will be skilled at organizational design, process design, business strategy, recruiting, mentoring, coaching, public speaking, and written communication. They’ll also have a broad personal network and a broad foundation from product engineering to infrastructure engineering. That’s not even a particularly complete
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The act of writing a strategy leads folks through a systematic analysis, so, even if we don’t share them, writing these documents helps us work through quite a few challenges, both overwhelming and mundane.
Will Larson • An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
take an hour and write up as many goals as you can for what you’d like to accomplish in the next one to five years. Then prioritize the list, pick a few that you’d like to focus on for the next three to six months, and share it with your manager at your next one-on-one.
Will Larson • An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
To increase the number of folks leading this kind of project, I’ve iterated into a structured process that has worked quite well: