After twenty plus years in the tech industry, you start to spot patterns. One such situation is when a new leader joins an organization.

Notes:


After twenty plus years in the tech industry, you start to spot patterns.
Some of those are positive, but many are pointless or even harmful.
For the negative ones, tech people like to use the term anti-pattern, which according to Wikipedia is defined as:
"An anti-pattern in software engineering, project management, and business processes is a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive.", source - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern
One such situation is when a new leader joins an organization, and I must admit to being guilty of these myself in the past.
There are a few classic moves that I see new leaders in an organization repeat over and over in their first six months:


Team reorg - this can include firing existing people, reducing overall headcount, or bringing in their own trusted people from their past.
UX refresh - this is a classic response: blame the product for the current problems, and immediately design a new UX to address this.
Process re-engineering - again a classic response: blame the current processes for the problems, and bring in new processes to address this.

After a few decades in an industry, these patterns become dull and predictable.
I have come to the conclusion that most issues are cultural issues, and that takes time to fix.
Sadly however, a new leader may only have a few quarters to make an impact, especially in a public company, so it can be tempting to reach for these easier levers to pull upon.
The higher up an organization you climb, the less time you should be spending on detail, and the more time you should dedicate to culture and strategy.
An inexperienced leader will tend to do the opposite, and get lost in the details.
An experienced leader entering a new organization will know it will take them 1-2 years to make a meaningful impact on culture and strategy, and should negotiate such a timeline during their interview process.
Patience is the key, and expectations need to be set accordingly from the very beginning.
What I am working on this week:


Fighting against a spam bot attack on greppr.org

Media I am enjoying this week:


Diaspora by Greg Egan.



Notes and subscription links are here: https://techleader.pro/a/641-Tech-Leader-Pro-podcast-2024-week-15,-new-leader-anti-patterns

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