The key to maintaining engineering excellence in a world of constant change
They say the only constant in life is change. In the technology industry, this is only partially true. By building and nurturing a set of constants, companies can allow themselves to thrive in the long term, regardless of which technological revolution we face next.
Organizations that implement foundational technical, architectural, and operational practices can undoubtedly weather times of change because they have built the extensible IT infrastructure and processes to help them chart a necessary path forward. But what does it take to truly thrive in periods of uncertainty? The core attributes of organizations that I have seen most successful in maintaining technical excellence are not only balanced, but artfully combine a sense of high ambition and resilience, a culture of continuous learning and authentic approaches to leadership.
Managing Vice President of Financial Technology, Capital One.
Cultivate high ambition and resilience through data
First, successful tech organizations measure the right things and turn data into actionable insights and targeted learning paths focused on skill building, growth and professional development. For example, if teams are slow to detect an incident with their application, it could be due to improper monitoring and alerting. If cycle times are lacking, the engineer may need to improve test automation skills. If cloud storage or cloud costs are unnecessarily high, the infrastructure may be poorly designed or too complex.
In all these cases, metrics and a test-and-learn approach should be embedded into the organization’s natural rhythms so that data indicates whether teams continue on their current path or switch to a different approach. This continuous review and feedback loop can help leaders make impactful decisions, take action, and optimally support and coach their teams in the pursuit of excellence.
These data-driven insights are also critical for identifying areas where engineers spend time on manual or routine tasks, much of which can be reduced with automation. Automation can be an incredibly powerful tool for shifting engineers’ capacity from these tasks to more creative problem-solving and career-defining work. Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) have added rocket fuel to this effort, enabling the automation of complex and time-consuming workflows and activities. With the bandwidth unlocked by automation, engineers can set their sights on continuous experimentation and innovation (an exciting prospect if you’re working to solve challenging problems in financial services, for example).
Key performance indicators and data must extend beyond product performance. Implementing these metrics into an organization’s performance and talent management routines can also help strengthen organizational health, which is especially important as leaders continue to raise the bar for talent. In my experience, it is these engineering best practices (measuring what matters, pursuing excellence in those metrics, and supporting engineers to achieve ambitious goals) that not only provide the framework for pursuing bold innovations, but are also key to attracting and retaining teams with world-class talent.
Fostering a growth mindset and a culture of continuous learning
Simply put, great engineers want to collaborate with other great engineers. They expect technical excellence from the organizations they join (and stay) because this high-talent bar is the foundation for continually shipping products with meaningful results for the company and customers. For leaders of these high-performing organizations, the pursuit of top talent is “always on.”
All technical leaders, regardless of their level of expertise or career stage, must understand that their work also includes the constant pursuit of new personal skills and knowledge. Here, leaders must free up time and capacity for all team members to seek customized training, certifications, and mentoring to stay at the forefront of technology and AI skills. Establishing rituals such as ‘Invest in Yourself Days’, where employees can take advantage of learning and professional development opportunities on days when meetings are few, and creating access to easy-to-use learning hubs with targeted learning paths are useful tactics to foster a growth mindset within to promote every organization. organization.
Leading with authenticity and seeking truth
Finally, in addition to leveraging data to inform business operations and creating skill-building rituals and platforms for learning, leaders must invest in increasing their teams’ trust and sense of psychological safety through healthy behavior from to show the top. This means fostering a tech culture that embraces change as an opportunity, where teammates feel comfortable seeking help on areas of weakness, and where they can embrace failures or mistakes as learning opportunities.
It is important to not only amplify wins, but also to honor and elevate uncovered truths that help organizations or businesses in scalable ways and for the long term. By having difficult and honest conversations about gaps or failures in our systems and processes, we can foster a culture of individual success and a team mentality that focuses on solving tough problems for the greater good.
For me, the key to maintaining engineering excellence in a world of constant change is this three-pronged approach to leadership: using data to influence the rhythms and routines of the organization (its backbone), increasing the passion for continuous learning and growing (the brain), and strengthening authenticity and seeking truth in work and interactions (the heart). When leaders have all three – the backbone, the brain and the heart – they are well prepared to scale and lead large organizations for the long term.
We can survive change or thrive in it. We can achieve one-off technical excellence or keep raising the bar. By creating a culture of data-driven innovation, a growth mindset, and fostering heart-centered leadership, technology managers can equip their teams to turn the complexity of change into a source of competitive advantage.
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