Leadership

While I started my career as a software engineer, I quickly understood that I was much more interested in the real-world impact of my work than in the craft of software engineering per se. I also understood that, in most industries, the only way to increase your impact past a certain threshold is to build and lead organizations.

This led me to become a technology leader, holding CTO positions at different companies and learning more (primarily by screwing up) about systems thinking, organizational design, performance management, and change management.

To me, leadership is the art of working on the organization by:

• Building shared vision
• Setting structure, incentives, and culture
• Designing an operating cadence
• Staying consistent over time, but also
• Initiating change when needed