Notes on strategy and execution

Will Larson, How to Size and Assess Teams From an Eng Lead at Stripe, Uber and Digg. This pull-quote lead me through some juicy lines of thinking:

Inflection points are just sustained implementation of a very reasonable thing. Often, the role of the great leader is not to come up with a brilliant strategy, but to convince people to stay the course with a very basic strategy.

Leaders lead folks in exercising a plan or series of plans (i.e. strategy). Basic strategies are almost certain to outperform complex strategies. Complex strategies tend to leak energy and effort at the seams between the basic/legible parts and all the edge cases and exceptions that generate complexity.

Top of Mind No. 6

I’ve been thinking a lot about setting expectations and goals. I have an idea about setting expectations on how we practice software development in teams and four pillars thereof. They are, broadly: alignment/consensus, accountability/responsibility, transparency/visibility, execution. These seem like four useful touch-points for coaching individuals. More concretely: help teammates drive scope (down, mostly) by setting time expectations and iterating from there.

The other angle on my mind is using subjective measurements to evaluate changes to human systems. That is, don’t ask a person or team to change how they work and immediately hit a numeric benchmark. Instead, ask them how the change is going and rate it from 1-5, worst to best. If the desired outcome is “know what the team is up to on most days”, ask them to write a status report, but don’t specify a number to hit. Instead, use 1:1s to reflect on how the change is impacting their work, look for advantages or shortcomings to the change in process, and decide how to correct course from there.

Updates: LLMs are still promising, but not as much for leadership work. Working incrementally, still underrated.

Inside you, there are two or more brains

David Hoang, Galaxy Brain, Gravity Brain, and Ecosystem Brain:

The Galaxy Brain thinkers are in 3023 while we're in 2023. They relentlessly pursue the questions, “What if?” Imagination and wonder fuel the possibilities of what the world could be.

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I believe every strong team requires skeptics and realists. Introducing, the Gravity Brain. Don't get it twisted in thinking this is negative—it's a huge positive. If you say "jump," to a Gravity Brain person, they won't say, "how high?" Instead, they say, "Why are we jumping? Have we considered climbing a ladder? Based on the average vertical jump of humans on Earth, this isn't worth our time." Ambition and vision don’t matter if you don’t make progress towards them.

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Ecosystem Brains think a lot of forces of nature and behaviors. They are usually architects and world builders. When they join a new company, they do an archeological dig to understand the history of society, language, and other rituals.

I’m a natural gravity brain and occasional ecosystem brain. I aspire to galaxy brain, but often get there by of proposing a joke/bad idea to clear my mind and get to the good ideas.

Which one are you?