Nick Cadwell – Chief Product Officer at Looker (acquired by Google) previously Reedit, and Microsoft

For other QCon blog posts, see QCon live blog table of contents

Tech leads vs managers

• Weren’t any managers
• Lots of people called “tech leads” – nebulous job titles,
• Split tech leads into managers and architects
• Asked questions to determine if emphasis is people or tech. One question was about deadlines. That should be important to both.

Scaling

• When growing, solving problems by hiring more people
• Need more specialization and focus
• Makes harder for people to switch
• Creates politics/boundaries
• Decreases ownership at individual level
• People don’t feel empowered
• Reduces productivity/retention/development/delegation. Recipe for burnout

Leadership vs Management

• Management – stability, short team, plans around constraints
• Leader- change, long term, sets/leads direction, long term
• “Leadership is working with goals and vision. Management is working with objectives”
• Position leadership doesn’t scale – don’t have to be a manager to lead.
• Everyone is potentially a leader
• People want opportunities to lead; not just positions.
• Opportunity to lead outperforms financial incentives on retention surveys

Management tool: Leadership breadcrumbs

• Provide visibility into problems that working on but don’t have capacity to fix
• Invite discussions – solutions only, no complaining
• Wait and repeat. Eventually someone will take the bait
• Provide support and reward for stepping up
• Don’t need to support every idea financial. Can just discuss further. The idea of taking it seriously matters

Individual tool: The Golden Question

• Ask yourself or others what you would do if you had another pair of hands
• These are opportunities for leadership

Leadership

• Top leadership traits said to be: vision, empathy, empowerment, charisma and expertise
• But there are counter examples
• Steve Jobs wasn’t empowering
• Jeff Bezos isn’t known for empathy
• Elon Musk – burn out? should delegate more
• Mark Zuckerberg not known for charisma
• Passion is leadership fuel
• Survey: Most millionaires started with goal of passion not money

Manager tool: Blue Flame Chart

• Align individual passion and organizational needs
• Intersect intrinsic/extrinsic motivators with org goals
• Add team member feedback. Most individuals don’t see themselves clearly. Ask someone else what good at

Sparking leadership

• First rule of leadership: everything is your fault
• Biggest reason for not stepping up is fear of being blamed/help responsible
• Switch mentality from contributor to leader
• Leaders take responsiblity for what happens next

Mentor vs sponsor

• Mentor – gives advice, makes suggestions, discusses
• Sponsor – opens doors, shares hard feedback, pushes to strive for more, creates opportunities, advocates for you
• [I think there is some overlap. Mentoring doesn’t just have to be about the positive. You can share hard feedback too..]

Code is a deprecicating asset, your network is an appreciating asset

My impressions

This was great. He has excellent passion and a clear relatable message. I suspect there are a lot of people in the room like me (who want to be leaders but not managers.) I was tired when I sat down and I’m not anymore. This keynote definitely woke up my brain!