In the previous posts, we learned what Leadership is and what Leadership is NOT. In this post, we learn how to lead an organization or business unit reliably.
Leading Reliably an Organization or Business Unit means:
1. Identifying and Creating the Core Principles, Core Values for your team or group
2. Creating a Vision and Strategy to achieve that vision
3. Defining the KPI (Key Performance Indicators) for your team and tools, and processes to measure them consistently
4. Executing the Day to Day Activities by keeping an eye on the above principles, vision, strategy, and KPIs
5. Adapt to changes and train the team in the same
6. Making judgments through knowledge, experience, common sense, empathy
7. Create an Ownership Culture – encouraging failures
8. Coping with change and ambiguity
9. As VP of Engineering, managing the complexity and change
10. As CTO, introducing the valuable change
11. Defining the business metrics and customer metrics clearly and monitoring them
What do Values mean? (as VP of Engineering)
Values help in making hiring decisions, software product feature readiness, software product quality, software product design, and more
What are Core Principles one can create? (as VP of Engineering)
Operational Principles
- Using Data as a tool for decision making
- Create Trust with the Customer – first and most important
- Excellence through hands-on experiences
- Leverage Tools and Platforms for Efficiency over home-grown solutions
Team Building Principles
- Knowledge is power, empower continuous learning culture within the team
- Open communication, capture different perspectives to build better products, solutions, services, outcomes
- Empathy, Caring, Mentoring, Multiple Opportunities
What are Business Metrics and Customer Metrics?
Business Metrics are
- Top Level Growth (volume of customers),
- Bottom Level Margins (profits, share)
- Market competitiveness (market share)
Customer Metrics are
- Customer Success (tangible)
- Customer Happiness, Trust, and Loyalty