While working at Microsoft as a Cloud Solution Architect in Data Platform, one of the things we constantly thrive for is improving ourselves and our customers by spreading our energy and passion. A way to improve this is by focusing on our growth path to see which skills we lack and how we can improve those. One of those skills for me is leadership, and how we can grow towards managing a team and reaching new heights. Just think of managing a team of Architect, managing a Product team or even managing the technical strategy of Microsoft (=CTO).
In previous articles, I already defined the core values (see them here) that I think a leader should express (Focus, Inclusion, Commitment, Exploration and Listening). But what are the skills that others have that we still need to learn? This is what I will tackle in the following few lines.
I started by discovering what the current leaders of today are doing and focusing on, as well as some job descriptions that fit with the profiles of leaders. In here I will list up some leaders and job descriptions that fit my interest for finding skills regarding "technical leaders" rather than the normal "business leaders" in a summary kind of style.
2 market (supply & demand) problem solved by tightly managing the community till there is enough supply and demand for the hockey-stick.
Engineers are now "business process owners" who want a problem and be in charge of solving it.
Another important thing that is often overlooked, or neglected and that is in combination with Customer Obsession is the quality of the product. If your product is not reliable, fast or has a wrong UX, customers will not be retained. Resulting in a high Customer Acquisition cost (CAC) but even a lower Lifetime Value (LTV).
Therefore you need to make sure as a leader that you know which KPIs define your product and customer obsession. Without these you will not expire the growth that you expected and your product will experience doom sooner than later.
As a leader, you will need to put a clear strategy and roadmap for the product (as a VP in engineering) or for the company (as a CTO, more horizontally focused) that can be communicated to the outer world, but also towards the inner parts of an organization.
Large scale organizations are like a Container Ship. Once you steer them, the effect is not instantly visible. Therefore you need to do everything you can to speed this up, because the speed that an organization runs on, will define the speed to market that you can achieve.
The last point I want to summarize from this is your team. As often thought, you are not in charge of them! They are in charge of you. Your team is the one that will deliver you your success, so you should treat them like it. Listen to them, empower them and give them the freedom they need to be successful. Because in the end, with a good team you can take on the world.