> Then I realised that "I don't want the details" wasn't being dismissive. The executive assumed that we were competent, and was saying "I already believe you. Now let's talk about what happens next".
Something about this feels wrong:
- If you trust them completely, you don't need to know what happens next either. Just trust them to do the right things, your leadership isn't required.
- If you don't trust them completely, how can you know if "what happens next" is appropriate without knowing the details?
Isn't this just reinforcing the idea that leadership doesn't need to have their feet on the ground?
The best leaders I've worked with were paying attention to things from the bottom-up as well as top-down.
> The best leaders I've worked with were paying attention to things from the bottom-up as well as top-down.
If I have a handle on things from bottom-up to top-down, I don't need them to rehash weed-level technical and specific details. I need them to tell me what we're going to change, and it needs to be a BIG systemic change, not minutiae, which is where many engineers thrive.
> If I have a handle on things from bottom-up to top-down, I don't need them to rehash weed-level technical and specific details.
I should have been clearer.
When I said that good leaders pay attention to things from the bottom-up, that doesn't mean they always know everything needed for any discussion. It just means they are able and keen to understand the low-level details when they matter, because they routinely look at such details in the projects that they're involved in.
Of course it's possible that this story is just told badly and the SVP already knew the technical details, in which case the blog post is a bit misleading.
> I need them to tell me what we're going to change, and it needs to be a BIG systemic change, not minutiae, which is where many engineers thrive.
How can one know if the engineers' proposed "BIG systemic change" is appropriate and complete, without knowing the details of the problem it is addressing?
> Of course it's possible that this story is just told badly and the SVP already knew the technical details, in which case the blog post is a bit misleading.
I don't think it's necessarily misleading; it's just reminding folks that senior leaders have a different perspective than those below them and tailoring your message to the audience is important.
In this case of this, it was a reminder that while it's easy to believe the SVP is being dismissive, that's not the case at all. Instead, they want systems-oriented decisioning, not detail-oriented.
If anything, this was the SVP helping to grow the leaders under him by forcing them to think at the levels required to interact w/the rest of the organization.
> How can you know if their "big change" is appropriate and good without knowing the details of the problem the change is addressing?
I'm a Senior Director leading three teams of engineering and science resources. I hired smart and capable people. Why should I, as a SrD be a technical bottleneck?
> How can one know if the engineers' proposed "BIG systemic change" is appropriate and complete, without knowing the details of the problem it is addressing?
That’s the trust thing. Maybe the SVP trusts the people in his organization are capable of making the appropriate change without his supervision and what he’s doing is coaching them on how to do an incident postmortem properly.
Of course as you called out, the SVP might already have all the necessary details to do more than that. But simply pushing people in the right direction is a big piece of leadership’s job, at least when they have people they trust.
If execs demand a big change every time something goes wrong, they will demoralize everyone working for them, and probably waste a lot of money.
Most of the time, operational failures are either the result of a new feature being sent off without enough testing, or a dozen small failures lining up to remove resilience. Big changes without well-thought out plans primarily serve to stoke executive egos.
FartyMcFarter · · focus · HN ↗
Something about this feels wrong:
- If you trust them completely, you don't need to know what happens next either. Just trust them to do the right things, your leadership isn't required.
- If you don't trust them completely, how can you know if "what happens next" is appropriate without knowing the details?
Isn't this just reinforcing the idea that leadership doesn't need to have their feet on the ground?
The best leaders I've worked with were paying attention to things from the bottom-up as well as top-down.
garciasn · · focus · HN ↗
If I have a handle on things from bottom-up to top-down, I don't need them to rehash weed-level technical and specific details. I need them to tell me what we're going to change, and it needs to be a BIG systemic change, not minutiae, which is where many engineers thrive.
FartyMcFarter · · focus · HN ↗
I should have been clearer.
When I said that good leaders pay attention to things from the bottom-up, that doesn't mean they always know everything needed for any discussion. It just means they are able and keen to understand the low-level details when they matter, because they routinely look at such details in the projects that they're involved in.
Of course it's possible that this story is just told badly and the SVP already knew the technical details, in which case the blog post is a bit misleading.
> I need them to tell me what we're going to change, and it needs to be a BIG systemic change, not minutiae, which is where many engineers thrive.
How can one know if the engineers' proposed "BIG systemic change" is appropriate and complete, without knowing the details of the problem it is addressing?
garciasn · · focus · HN ↗
I don't think it's necessarily misleading; it's just reminding folks that senior leaders have a different perspective than those below them and tailoring your message to the audience is important.
In this case of this, it was a reminder that while it's easy to believe the SVP is being dismissive, that's not the case at all. Instead, they want systems-oriented decisioning, not detail-oriented.
If anything, this was the SVP helping to grow the leaders under him by forcing them to think at the levels required to interact w/the rest of the organization.
> How can you know if their "big change" is appropriate and good without knowing the details of the problem the change is addressing?
I'm a Senior Director leading three teams of engineering and science resources. I hired smart and capable people. Why should I, as a SrD be a technical bottleneck?
dpark · · focus · HN ↗
That’s the trust thing. Maybe the SVP trusts the people in his organization are capable of making the appropriate change without his supervision and what he’s doing is coaching them on how to do an incident postmortem properly.
Of course as you called out, the SVP might already have all the necessary details to do more than that. But simply pushing people in the right direction is a big piece of leadership’s job, at least when they have people they trust.
dsr_ · · focus · HN ↗
Most of the time, operational failures are either the result of a new feature being sent off without enough testing, or a dozen small failures lining up to remove resilience. Big changes without well-thought out plans primarily serve to stoke executive egos.
garciasn · · focus · HN ↗
dsr_ · · focus · HN ↗