Norms for a leadership team
As organizations expand, engineering teams starts to grow apart. Silos start to show up. The management team (especially) starts drifting apart.
This quickly results in broken communication, lack of alignment, sub-optimal prioritization, turf wars and everything you imagine when you hear organizational politics.
Management team in this context is the group of managers and leaders within an organization.
Managers do not cause this drift (in most cases), but managers can absolutely work together to control this drift and ensure alignment. The best organizations I have witnessed are the ones where managers and leaders are aligned, motivated and share common principles and norms.
This write-up presents leadership norms I strongly believe keeps teams well connected and close-knit.
Optimize for the business
Management team’s success depends solely on the business outcome. Make the right local decisions to help the company with its broader priorities. When in doubt, optimize for what’s right for the business. Ask yourself — would you do this if this was your company?
- Nothing matters as much as delivering value to customers (internal or external).
- Balance short term and long term gains. Its hard, but that’s…
