Peer & Leadership Alignment (LCPS01E14)
Overview
Small gaps in alignment at the leadership level become canyons by the time they reach your teams.
Alignment, as in people really agreeing on what to do, why, and how to get it done. It's also one of those leadership things that sounds so simple and straightforward in theory. But we all know that it's not always that easy in practice.
My guest for this episode, Neil, brings his experiences on the topic of alignment. Neil has 25 years of experience in the industry. He's primarily worked in startup contexts, focusing on communications and data aggregation. For the last 10 years, he's been in senior engineering leadership positions with organizations of 50-100 people.
Neil and I talk about how to spot misalignment before it becomes a canyon and a crisis. We speak about the hard work of building genuine consensus at the leadership level and how to translate high level strategy into something that your engineering teams can actually use to make decisions.
Together, we bring you practical mechanics of creating alignment that is not just nodding along in meetings, but the kind that permeates every aspect of decision making within your organization.
This conversation was recorded in June 2024.
Intro
Lena: Small gaps in alignment at the leadership level become canyons by the time they reach your teams. You know that feeling when your team seems stuck going in circles on decisions that should be straightforward when capable and smart people are struggling to make progress, not because they lack skills, but because something somehow at a deeper level isn't quite right. But it's really hard to pinpoint exactly what.
And then once you dive deeper into these issues, it very often becomes clear that the issue isn't, that people are lazy or that they don't want to do well, unlike some executives may pause it, but that the issue is misalignment. And the misalignment that's often so subtle that it's impossible to spot it the surface. And a misalignment that often traces back to senior leadership and executive levels.
Yes, those exact same senior leaders that ask you questions about why things aren't moving faster. Those tiny gaps in their understanding seem manageable in their meetings, but suddenly create massive friction for the people doing the actual work.
This is leadership confidential, real talk on more than two hard things in technology, finding community and becoming the engineer leader you can be. Today, we talk about one of those big words that we all like to throw around. I'm definitely guilty of that. And sometimes without being 100% well aligned on what they mean.
Alignment as in people really agreeing on what to do, why, and how to get it done. It's also one of those leadership things that sounds so simple and straightforward in theory, like, duh, of course everyone should agree, but we also all know that it's not always that easy in practice.
You know, I'm a systems person and from a systems perspective, misalignment has this especially nasty quality. It's so much more painfully felt at lower levels in your organization than at the executive levels. At the executive level, and I've been and still am in many of those meetings. Small disagreements often feel manageable.
They're often also abstract or easy to brush aside with a quick, ah, we'll figure it out, or even the teams will figure it out. We trust that they've got this. But by the time those small gaps cascade down to teams that try to plan their work and make day-to-day decisions and move fast, they suddenly become major roadblocks and usually become much, much bigger because unlike the executives working on topics at an abstract level, teams have to handle a lot of concrete problems that arise as a result of that.
And that is what my guest and I today talk about. My guest name is Neil. Neil has 25 years of experience in the industry. He's primarily worked in startup contexts, focusing on communications and data aggregation. For the last 10 years, he's been in senior engineering leadership positions with organizations of 50 to a hundred people.
That sweet spot where alignment becomes both critical and suddenly unprecedentedly complex. Neil and I talk about how to spot misalignment before it becomes a canyon and a crisis. We speak about the hard work of building genuine consensus at the leadership level and how to translate high level strategy into something that your engineering teams can actually use to make decisions.
We dive into the practical mechanics of creating alignment that is not just nodding along in meetings, but the kind that permeates every aspect of decision making within your organization. Here's real talk on more than two hard things in technology with Neil.
Our Conversation
[00:00:00] Lena: All right. So who are you and how long have you been in the industry?
[00:00:06] Neil: well, I've worked in the industry about 25 years, primarily in startup contexts, and primarily in communications, and a kind of aggregation of various different sources and trying to jam those things together.
[00:00:21] Lena: Nice. And in terms of your current role and purview, is there anything that might be worth sharing just for context? I'm thinking organizational size or anything like that. Yeah. High level. Anything you're
[00:00:36] Neil: I guess most recently, and I guess for the last 10 years or so, I've been working in engineering leadership positions. the sort of, size organization where I think my sort of sweet spot is, that sort of 50 to 100 people. What I would talk about today will be, you know, from, from the perspective of a leader of that sort of organization.
but then also how do you go get to that size from, you know, a 10 person company or a 20 person company? and I don't know too much about what happens after a hundred, 150 other than it looks.
[00:01:08] Lena: think no one knows.
[00:01:10] Neil: but that will be the sort of, you know, if I can speak on with authority on any size of engineering org, that's going to be the area where,where I'll speak most,
[00:01:19] Lena: Awesome. and then anything you want to share about your identity or so,
[00:01:24] Neil: I'm, a pretty boring white guy kind of, archetype within the industry. yeah, that's, that's about it.
[00:01:31] Lena: thank you for sharing though. And what are you here to talk about?
[00:01:35] Neil: well, I thought today maybe we could talk about, alignment. How do you get alignment? across your management team in an organization, figure out what's actually important to your business. And then once you've figured that out, how as an engineering leader, do you interpret that? And how do you make it accessible to your team?
So that it isn't just, you know, management coming up with some slogans that sound great, but you can't do anything with them. How do you actually apply that in your day to day? And make it useful and have confidence in the decisions that you're going to make on the ground.
[00:02:07] Lena: Let's go. I'm going to start with the definition and I think that's kind of mean, because honestly I struggle to define alignment sometimes. So how do you define it?
[00:02:16] Neil: Yeah, I think it's one of those topics that it's really easy to try and over intellectualize it. But really, it's just that everyone agrees on some core things. And they agree in a way that isn't nodding along, they have internalized it to the point that it then permeates every aspect of their decision making within the organization.
So, that then means that even the tiniest little gaps between two people actually are material and significant, and you have to spend a lot of time really trying to get to the point where everybody is comfortable. With what those sort of ground truths are going to beyou can't just sort of nod it along and compromise in the moment But then sort of stick to what you were hoping you've got further along, you've really got to delve into that.
And I think that might be, that's where you start right at the top, because, you know, if you have two leaders within an organization who are saying pretty much the same thing, but not quite the same thing, that tiny little gap that seems sort of okay in when those two are in the room, how that's felt.
Further down the organization becomes a massive great big gap and really quite significant decisions are now becoming possible and blocked. So you have to go right the way back up the organization to actually get some clarity on which way to go. And, that slows you down, it gets everyone frustrated.
And so you have to spend that time at a leadership level, just agreeing and then internalizing on these sort of basic truths of why do you exist? What are you trying to do? What's important, right? Now,I think a lot of organizations can skip over that or believe that they've achieved it and perhaps haven't achieved.
I think that's probably the most dangerous
[00:04:01] Lena: Mhm.
[00:04:02] Neil: So, yeah, that's kind of how I would think about alignment.
[00:04:05] Lena: I think honestly, I also really like that you've already covered basically, like, why is it important? the sort of, it's not even a ripple effect that misalignment has at the leadership level, but it's more, I was honestly trying to find a good visual, and couldn't, but it's more that like small cracks at the top are going to, like, be important.
lead to large, the gaps basically across the organization. can't find a good metaphor, but I'm going to keep looking at some point in 10 minutes or
[00:04:31] Neil: I sort of think of it like, like a sort of gorge that opens up and you have a tiny crack at one end. And then as you go down that crack just grows and grows and grows. And by the end of it, you've got a whole canyon.
[00:04:42] Lena: Yeah. You've got two continents. Like splitting
[00:04:45] Neil: apart. and that pain is real, right? If you are on the ground in that situation, you just can't get stuff done. and it didn't feel that bad at the leadership level because it was such a small gap, like it's, you know, you can't always agree with everything perfectly and yet you have to find a way to, to find that shared understanding and really internalize it so that when you're not thinking about it directly.
As a leader, you are still true to that core belief.
[00:05:12] Lena: I want to, highlight the point that I thought was really good there, which is that the misalignment is like much more painfully or acutely felt at lower levels in the organization and not, not as much often at leadership levels. because I, very much agree. and I think that is honestly, that's At least in my experience, I'd love to hear what it's been like for you, but, that is one of the most dangerous things about it because at the executive level or so it's often just, ah, yeah, like, we'll figure it out.
It's going to be fine. Whereas, in like the levels of the organization where then the day to day work needs to get planned and prioritized and actually done based on that. people actually, as I think I heard from you, I get stuck. They don't know what the path forward is, or they're annoyed because, Oh, like the head of product and the head of engineering are again, not on the same page and the product manager is pushing for something else.
and I think those, like basically those effects of misalignment, like not being felt as vastly. in the same way at all levels. I think, honestly, there is a huge issue. I mean, I think it's, now that, you know, I've heard you put it this way, it's also, I mean, I think this is a quite common issue in other areas as well.
But yeah, I just thought it was a really good observation.
Well, there's also a it's not even just in the moment. You can't bridge the gap at that point. about sort of, lower level in the organization. It's the cumulative grind of that. So every single time you have to touch on this area, you know, that your counterpart and product might go somewhere else and every single time you have to have the same,It's a good the same, it starts to be like a battle, it erodes trust, how can you build trust with someone when you know that you're both trying to do slightly different things.
[00:06:50] Neil: And the only way you solve that is you get your, you know, collective, you management chains to actually do the work and. and close that gap for you. And then suddenly everything drops away because it's not, you know, it's a structural thing that's making you and your, counterpart, have to be misaligned.
Or you just go rogue anyway and just decide for yourself. But then you are either doing the opposite of what your direct boss is telling you to do. That's, that can be quite challenging. or your, you and your counterparts come up with some third completely different way, and that's also probably not gonna be, super great.
[00:07:23] Lena: or you're told you're not collaborating well enough, like,
[00:07:26] Neil: Right. Right.
[00:07:28] Lena: you're not building alignment, like suddenly,
[00:07:31] Neil: And all of this because, you know, your boss or your boss's boss or boss's boss just haven't, haven't really spent that time to close the gap as tightly as they possibly could.
[00:07:42] Lena: kind of honestly want to pull on that thread a little bit, if that's okay. Because I, it's kind of, it's not my favorite thing to say out loud, but I find it useful as a kind of model is that my sense is that quite often, organizations are most ready to change in the areas where like the pain is most acutely felt.
And most like quite often, that is not the place where kind of the decisions about change happen. Like I feel like that is a really good example of that. So I honestly, that's why I want to ask. It sounds like, you know, if the misalignment is most acutely felt, in like different parts of the organization, then like, we're basically, the issue is kind of starting.
I do want to say, because I guess a lot of things are systemic, but at this point we're basically talking about leadership misalignment trickling through the org. how do you then, you know, as a leadership team, maybe first of all, how do you spot the misalignment? How do you know that, oh, we actually need to get on this and fix this?
[00:08:40] Neil: Yeah, I think, as a leadership team, much as you say that you spot that something is wrong because you see some team is unable to do their stuff in the way that you think they ought to be able to. And you're looking at and thinking, well, there's very capable people there that the app, the results that they're getting just aren't what we want.
And they don't seem to be talking to each other. You know what's going
[00:09:01] Lena: So it's like delivery challenges and some sort of communication breakdowns, collaboration
[00:09:06] Neil: or or maybe God, this, you know,
[00:09:08] Lena: I'm just trying to, you know,
[00:09:09] Neil: yeah, they, they,they're spending so long going backwards and forwards on this one topic. It's really obvious what they should do. why are they finding this
[00:09:15] Lena: Oh God. Yeah. It's really obvious.
[00:09:16] Neil: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm, mean, I, I say in a sort of, youwith some irony dripping off, but, but that's the thing, like from a lead, from a leadership point of view,
[00:09:25] Lena: It's like, why can't they figure it
[00:09:26] Neil: yeah. What's, what's, going on here.
[00:09:28] Lena: I can feel myself getting worked up. Yeah.
[00:09:31] Neil: Um, and then, you go and sort of spend a bit more time with them. And, I think that the, you know, it's a little bit like, I, I do a lot of running, I go and occasionally have to go and see a physio and I say to them, look, my ankle really hurts and I assume they're going to go and poke around my ankle.
And what they actually do is. poke the other leg right the way up. And it's because it's connected to here to connect to there. And, you know, and that's their skill to like trace through your body and understand
where the, where the real problem lies. And I think that's a bit like that. if you go into that situation naively, or you go into it, still with your engineering manager team hat on.
And you, try and fix at a team level. the best you're going to do is make it a little bit better. Maybe put some plasters over things, but the underlying problem is not going to get solved and it's always going to be there. and I guess the skill then is to, sometimes it is at a team level and you do help them that way.
but often it's not. And then you have to go up a level and maybe up another level And then it starts to get quite scary because these are big problems that have been hard to touch you've got to persuade other people that the problem's at a management level and not a team level
[00:10:45] Lena: unfortunate if it's your thing to figure out,
[00:10:48] Neil: Right, right.and you've got to find a language and a way to express that to your management team so that they get it, take it seriously and carve out enough time to really talk about it, get people in the right frame of mind to talk about it.and I think that takes a long time to get used to that. That approach because even if you develop the skill to realize where the problem lies You've got a whole extra set of skills that you've got to develop to make that case to your peer group and really get them to engage with it somehowand they're all busy You know, and they might not think this is really a problem at the management level.
They might be still quite happy to be like, no, it's just the team's wrong.
[00:11:31] Neil: your engineers are, yeah. Well, they're just being up at and they need to get over themselves and, you know, think about this more commercially and Yeah. and whatever. And so it's a hard, conversation to say No, I, think it's, I think it's not them.
[00:11:47] Lena: hmm.
[00:11:49] Neil: And you need a lot of support to be able to do that. now you can create an environment with your leadership team, whether that is easier or harder, I guess that's your CEO's job or your CEO's job to, you know, to try and create this sense of first team at a leadership level, you really have to invest in that.
because if you don't have those relationships,you really can't, or at least my experience has been, I found it much, much easier to do that in some organizations than others.
[00:12:19] Lena: Yeah. Me too. Yeah.
[00:12:20] Neil: and creating that environment is key
to,to doing it. And I've certainly been in companies where I think it's sort of,I've observed sort of three, three situations, one where, the group believes that there's a high level of alignment and trust and they believe that passionately.
But. Probably not true. One where you don't scratch the surface very far to realize how little trust there is in the room. Everyone's doing their own thing. Everyone understands what's important to their area and they're going to, they know that's ultimately how they'll be judged on and it's not a first team. That's quite a sort of toxic kind of grinding environment to be in.
[00:12:57] Lena: hmm. Yeah. Especially with the like Yeah, the surface level. We're all on the same page. It's all great. And then, but then right there below is the, yeah, no, actually nothing's good. again, breaking through that is
[00:13:08] Neil: and then, yeah, and then the third one, is not to say everything's great, but at least you can have the conversation when you do somehow have a strong enough bond with your peers to, to really be able to cut through when you have to. and, you know, I think that's what everyone would,hope to have.
but it's very, very difficult. to, to get there, and there's no good way, I mean, I've never been a, CEO, but there's no real good way to measure it either. so
[00:13:39] Lena: I have, and I can say that. Yes. That is accurate.
[00:13:41] Neil: Right, right. Um,
[00:13:43] Lena: Mm-Hmm?
[00:13:43] Neil: Mm-Hmm? How do you do that? I guess You do need to somehow create a sense of first team amongst that leadership You do need to sort of try and create an identity away from your functional
[00:13:55] Lena: Mm-Hmm.
[00:13:56] Neil: I, I guess ultimately that means the normal ways that you try and build trust in a group.
You try and find some way to help everyone feel safe to be vulnerable in front of their peers. If you can achieve that will go a long way. And you know, this sort of really classic example is you will sit around in a circle and somebody shares some significant moment from their childhood, say, or whatever, and you know, I'm not sort of trying to mock that because I do think there is something into it, but it's not a one off thing.
You, you build that. Assuredly over a long period of time,and you think also of course, just normal team values, you think very carefully about who you're going to bring into the group when you're hiring and all that sort of stuff. If you can get that, and it's not going well, but the room's not necessarily big enough Aligned that it's not well, some think it's fine. Some don't some, then you need, you need that mechanism to sort of raise the flag. Maybe you go in as a couple of you, or maybe you have to go in solo. and you just call out all the problems. And you say, this is because you have to feel safe to be able to challenge. And it's not, it's not, Oh, so and so you're wrong, but.
It's, this is the outcome, you know, like all the normal stuff, like when you're trying to give feedback of anything, like, you know, you're not trying to sort of make it a
[00:15:16] Lena: Situation, behavior, impact,
[00:15:17] Neil: right, right.
[00:15:18] Lena: or whatever your model of choice.
it's understanding different perceptions really like that, that is basically it's like, Oh, I have a different, like, here's my view on this. What is your view on this? And then you can ideally backtrace until you find the last place where you had the same view And then
[00:15:34] Neil: And then figure out where the, where they go, where they go. and then I think once you've. agreed that there is a gap, then I think you do just have to go through and ask yourself some very basic questions about your business. And,there's loads of different models, I guess, out there that you can
[00:15:47] Lena: think there's SWOT analysis or things like
[00:15:50] Neil: it could be that, or,
[00:15:51] Lena: know, to name a
[00:15:52] Neil: the, Patrick Lencioni's staff, uh,
[00:15:56] Lena: the, the five dysfunctions you mean
[00:15:58] Neil: I was thinking more the advantage,
[00:16:01] Lena: I would agree. It's a good
[00:16:02] Neil: um, but, Maybe the five dysfunctions for getting the environment, yeah, the environment so that you can then talk.
[00:16:09] Lena: Yeah. But like the good strategy, bad strategy, like remote, I think Richard, I just don't know how the last name is pronounced for you.
[00:16:16] Neil: And so you go through this process of writing down what you think the company is there to do. And every single word really matters. And it's extremely painful and you have to hope that everyone's bringing their full energy to the table because they've got to get behind it and they've got to align on this stuff.
And I think examples are really valuable and challenging counter examples are really valuable.
[00:16:39] Lena: you know, examples in the sense of if we write into our strategy, we want to whatever, expand our market in X, what would that actually look like at the feature levels? Or I
[00:16:48] Neil: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:16:49] Lena: are just kind of like thinking this through to the more lower level. or like, what kind of examples do you
[00:16:55] Neil: um, what would be the implication of this? And what are the trade offs we're making as a
[00:17:00] Lena: Yeah, I was, yeah. So including, I would also add the, like, what are we not doing
[00:17:04] Neil: right, right, Exactly that exactly that. Um, what are we not doing? Are we happy with that? Are we really happy with that? You
[00:17:14] Lena: really, really happy with
[00:17:15] Neil: so and so I'm looking at right now. Are you happy with that?
Um, and you go through that process and you write it all down and you challenge yourself with it.And, you know, these things are, shouldn't be complicated questions and they are, you know, like,why do we matter? Why do we exist? How are we going to
[00:17:34] Lena: the problem we're trying to solve? Who's our customer?
[00:17:36] Neil: Yeah, all that, all that stuff.
And, you know, so for instance, we recently went through this process and we realized that one of the core things, the core tensions was not that anyone disagreed with what we were doing, they disagreed, with the timeframe over which something might happen.
[00:17:55] Lena: Like the timeframe in terms of like sequencing of things or timeframe in terms of how fast it would be delivered.
[00:18:01] Neil: timeframe in terms of right now, we're trying to make a business successful in this way, but longer term, our ambitions are broader
we'd like to go here. And the point at which you start opening up that funnel was the point of contention. No one realized That was the point. We just knew that we kept fighting about how much we should optimize for the here and now, how much we look to the future.
And it all came down to where that point in the future might be, where we could start to, what would have to be true before we felt we'd got our core business actually working really well.
And then we could start sort of opening up that funnel a little bit. Like, how would that be? And we had some folks in the group that really thought we needed to do it right away
because if we didn't, we'd never get there and others who were like, if we do that right now, we will die because we need to focus.
[00:18:51] Lena: so, and so it was completely rational opinions. and we just had never realized that was the thing that Just like very different assumptions.
[00:18:59] Neil: Yeah. Yeah. once we knew that everyone was just, everyone just breathed out.
[00:19:02] Lena: whoa.
[00:19:03] Neil: we haven't.
[00:19:03] Lena: that we hate each other.
[00:19:05] Neil: Yeah.
[00:19:06] Lena: time, man. Time's so weird. Like, that must have been, like, yeah. Like, how did you actually realize that was the crux of it?
because it sounded like it was, you know, really intense process and there was a lot of like build up and for like misalignment for a really long time. And that's why I'm
[00:19:21] Neil: Yeah, I think it The two folks that were most into that were going backwards and forwards and I think a third party sometimes you just need someone who's not got quite so much skin in the game to say facilitating statement and suddenly all the veils just drop away everyone just sees it really clearly And you just felt the tension drop out of the room. It was extraordinary
[00:19:48] Lena: Well, do you remember whatwhat that person said?
[00:19:50] Neil: it wasn't, I don't remember the words. I remember the body language,which I can't express via podcast, but,
[00:19:56] Lena: I can, I can describe it and
[00:19:57] Neil: yeah, just, just everything
[00:20:00] Lena: It's like the tension
[00:20:01] Neil: yeah, yeah. I mean, if the sun was able to come out at that moment, it. would
[00:20:05] Lena: like, ah, the heavens opened and
[00:20:08] Neil: Because, because
[00:20:08] Lena: started singing again.
[00:20:09] Neil: suddenly then the oxygen to talk about this.
And the tension moved away and then we could move really rapidly. The next sort of 15 minutes was probably more productive than the whole, however many day workshop. and that really helped and that, and we could keep referring back to that moment for the rest of things. So, so that was a huge breakthrough for this particular team.
I've done this process where we never really had that moment. And I think a lot of people, you know, myself included, walked out thinking, I didn't work it out. Like what none of us did. and so that
was sort of quite troubling. I mean, those were. You know, it was earlier in my career, so I was sort of learning about how to have good meetings with that.
but, yeah, by just being, entering into those sorts of conversations in good faith, really trying to just give as much of yourself as possible to try and figure out where that tension comes from,then, You, if you can do that, then that's great. And you come out with your thing. And the problem is you put all of this effort in and then you, and you put it in your deck of how you're going to explain it to the rest of your company. and it reads something like, we're going to sell more BIS and it, and
[00:21:21] Lena: to, primarily Scottish people. And
[00:21:26] Neil: And and the rest of the orgs like, you're joking
[00:21:28] Lena: Yeah. So
[00:21:29] Neil: what what what you, you spent three days
[00:21:32] Lena: this, how did this take us like nine months? I couldn't, we've just like, yeah. I hate that when you're like, Oh man, like you, you'll never know how much went into this one line here about the fricking pretzels.
[00:21:46] Neil: yeah, that's, but the thing is that part's the easy part, right? Like you've worked out now what's important and now you've got to express it. So what you probably shouldn't do is show up in front of your company and say, right. We're going to sell our pretzels. Go.you've got to, you've got to make this more, consultative.
I think your culture and your business will determine exactly how you go about that.I think whatever you do there, you have to attack it in multiple different ways, multiple different channels. So you might, you might do individual anonymous surveys. You might do team get togethers and say, Hey, what does this mean for us?
[00:22:22] Lena: help people kind of connect the dots of like, their area with the big
[00:22:26] Neil: Yeah, yeah, Exactly that or
[00:22:28] Lena: With the one-liner about pretzels and Scottish people.
[00:22:31] Neil: Right, right. Like, what does this mean for us? we
[00:22:33] Lena: what
[00:22:34] Neil: Yeah.
[00:22:34] Lena: about the Irish
[00:22:36] Neil: we're the Irish team. Like, what are we supposed to do? and then, and you know, other, you might choose to share it with a, a smaller group, maybe your middle management or not just management, but there's just leaders within the
[00:22:47] Lena: Yeah. bring your technical leaders into this. I just want to
[00:22:50] Neil: yeah. Ex exactly. That. But what I found was you almost, you know, engineering, particularly in a startup context is often the largest group, like quite some way in the pattern that you apply in engineering is likely to be different to the rest of your peers because you have more people.
and what I found was that while the high level. Strategy, like we wanted to communicate that directly to everybody and have a A healthy sort of feedback cycle where people could scrutinize and we can still make changes to it we can answer that scottish irish pretzel problem, you know, and um,
[00:23:27] Lena: hopefully Yeah, I mean, hopefully we don't make huge changes, but sometimes you do get some really useful feedback but what I also found was it wasn't particularly actionable really You basically the words that you'd put on the page as a leadership team weren't actually or both power wasn't actionable.
[00:23:43] Neil: it was. Okay, so supposing we've got this pretzel business and we're going to focus on Scotland, but what does that mean where we're trying to choose our pretzel factory location, say, because you've got a great one in Ireland and it's really good, it's the best in the world, actually. so how do we use this knowledge?
what you probably then need to do is help your team through that process. And so you're going to create a sort of engineering strategy that is trying to bridge the kind of day to day stresses and strains that you might have, and in, but inform that with your company strategy and show, how it's linked.
[00:24:21] Lena: it's really spelling it out and then really getting into, okay, does this actually, what does this actually mean? What does it mean about for our branch in Dublin or?really trying to, you know, just paint a picture of it, really getting into the details is what
[00:24:34] Neil: yeah, very specific questions. Like, so, my company at the moment, we're an open source company. but not everything we do is open source. So how do we decide if a given project should be. Open source, if so, which license we're going to use and what should be proprietary. So you ask that question, you refer to your strategy overall, and you explain how to apply your strategy to answer that question.
And you give a really, hopefully unambiguous answer to here's how you decide. So either it's like really straightforward. It's just, you know, very simple algorithm to decide A or B, or it's more nuanced, but like, here's the five things you're considering and here's the process. so if it is more nuanced, you're probably going to need some level of managerial oversight on that kind of decision.
But ultimately, you know, we want you to, you know, try and decide yourself, make your recommendation, but here is your process for doing it. and going through that process, does definitely require your leadership across engineering because you say to them, what are the hard questions that you don't feel confident with?
And they tell you what those are,the format, the, that I used for that particular exercise. I took a, I don't know if it's actually his model or if he took it from somewhere else, but, a chap called Will Larson had
a, a sort of structure for engineering strategy. he, he might've taken it.
[00:26:01] Lena: I think it was adopted by like from the remote
[00:26:03] Neil: it is good strategy, bad strategy, isn't it? Yeah. and he, and, but basically
[00:26:07] Lena: a good like, bridge to engineering. Sorry.
[00:26:09] Neil: Right, right. you have your problem statement of what you're actually trying to solve as an engineering org. You're guiding principles that help you how to decide stuff. And then a list of actions that you're going to do that are either
things that enable you to transition, things that enable you to enforce like some guiding principle,or, you know, just anything that you know that you need to do to achieve the sorts of things that you're hoping to achieve.
and I found that structure really great because the, you know, that problem statement piece, that probably is largely top down. I mean, strategy by its nature, like, there is an element of top down. It has to be. It's your job. so you're hoping not to have to make too many changes to that structure. Though, definitely clarifications is valuable. The guiding principles is more a partnership with your leadership because they will have questions that are not on that list. You didn't think that that was a, the challenging questions. Oh, no, you're right. That is a challenging question. How would we, let's work it out together.
And then the actions I think very much is, you're looking to your team to, to help you with that. So you sort of engage them
more fully through the process. And the lovely thing about it is you share, you don't. You don't share it in one go. You start with the problem statement and at that point as the leader you're doing most of the work really to lay out in front of them.
They get more and more involved as the process goes on and by the time you're ready to ship everyone just feels very aligned with this and they've got a lot of personal ownership with this and I've definitely noticed the the engagement and the the energy that people were bringing to the table has increased as I've gone through, I've gone through this process and then you're going to share it with everybody.
[00:27:46] Lena: and they're going to have the same process again, to some degree. I mean, in this case, you're actually going to show the whole lot at them. So it's a lot of information, but you need this culture of feedback and iteration and challenge. And what I would really love to see is somebody come to me and say, I couldn't, I had this problem and I couldn't use the strategy to help me, right?
[00:28:05] Neil: What's that about? that would be great because It would show that they were trying to use the strategy. It would help me improve the strategy and hopefully then unblock someone else in the,in the future. the other thing that I'm, very much looking forward to is when I'm, you know, spouting off with leadership type stuff in front of my team and say, right, you know, this is where we're going or wherever.
The day that somebody uses that strategy to tell me that I'm wrong and that I'm actually misaligned with my own
strategy, that's also going to be a very big thing. Special moment because it really shows that you've built something that's valuable and that the person feels sort of empowered to use this to Stand their ground.
It gives you a shared language Because although you know, it's often very difficult when you're an individual contributor to Sort of switch up the abstraction layer To engage at a much more abstract level, which is where your management are often and it gives you a shared language to talk about this kind of stuff.
And I think that if you can get to the point where your team feel confident to use a written strategy for something like that, then that probably shows that you've, got it there,
[00:29:11] Lena: mm hm.
[00:29:12] Neil: particularly then if the leader's like you are right.
[00:29:16] Lena: well done.
[00:29:16] Neil: Yeah.
[00:29:18] Lena: There are so many good things in what you said. That's why I don't want to just like leave it there. The first bit that I wanted to pull out was the, like, around the last thing in terms of just, like, strategy is only useful when you actually use it.
[00:29:32] Neil: Right.
[00:29:33] Lena: And I liked, what I heard as, like, basically the process of, like, essentially, like, stress testing it. Like, as you're rolling this out at, like, different levels of the organization, like, actually, like, yeah, talking this through with people and, looking at, okay, what would this actually mean for your team, for your domain?
what decisions would you make as part of that? And both, I really liked what I at least interpreted as essentially, you might be walking through some very concrete examples with like, oh, this is the thing that you would build. This is maybe the thing you would deprioritize, but then also, basically making the thought process transparent.
Like maybe there's already a way to like use those principles that you've kind of defined in the, but basically. Not just testing, basically, which concrete decisions will be made, but basically how would people on the team make decisions in the future
[00:30:22] Neil: Right, right.
[00:30:22] Lena: so that you're not just solving for, well, what is whatever the roadmap for this year or what is it for the next quarter?
But also if say like a ticket or a new request comes in, how would people then make a decision about how to prioritize that basically?
[00:30:36] Neil: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly that. And being able to refer to it and pepper your language with it, I think is a really key way to keeping it front of other folks minds. and I've definitely found that useful because if you're talking about something where it's very high temperature, the person you're talking to.
Maybe doesn't actually like the way that this is going to conclude, but at least if they can understand where the structure is coming from, and it's something they're already familiar with, and they see how it fits into the whole, it's much easier to accept something that isn't, What you would want as a sort of one off outcome, if you can see how it fits in with the broader kind of picture, that you don't feel that you're being sort of, disadvantaged, like your team's getting a hard deal because you can see, okay, we're having to give this up, but if we give this up and everybody else gives this up, then that does open this other thing for us.
And if we just gave it up unilaterally, It would be ineffective and we just lose out. But because we know everyone is doing this and we trust that everyone else is doing this, we can see that you can have a different level of conversation with the team, and really sort of engage them more with the sort of overall Strategy of the company.
and hopefully that then is makes for a more empowered environment. They can understand how they really add value to their business and they understand where their team fits in with,with the whole.
[00:32:00] Lena: I honestly feel like I basically wanted to say yes, this, like several of the things you're saying, including at least what I heard, it's basically like as you're using different words to talk about these things, because like honestly in my experience one big weakness that a lot of strategy documents have and I think honestly, the remote approach is like fine, but it does, at least in my experience, especially for engineering teams, it does sort of foster a bit of a tendency, kind of philosophize and really sort of galaxy brain the whole situation.
and so that's why I think I kind of latched onto that. Um, what I heard from you in terms of like, you actually talk this through, you use different words because so many people often struggle when like, And honestly, understandably, because like I do too. And it's like, I mean, even with like alignment itself, like we realized or I talked about earlier, like there's so many big words and there's like, Oh, you know, the customer and the revenue and the market and, which is all like great and I'm sure that everyone listening to this is going to write great strategy documents as a result of listening to you, like sharing this, but I wanted to make a point to like really basically say, I use different language and use different words, like have people recap to you, maybe what they understood or how they're interpreting this, like really, because the more honestly you're sharing this, the more it feels to me, like there's a really visceral process in like building the alignment, like we really sort of one conversation, one Lego brick at a time.
And like, again, really sitting down, talking to people, walking through things, and not just saying, yeah, we're passing on this document and now it's rolled out, like box ticked.
[00:33:29] Neil: Yeah, you have to refer to it through multiple channels and use it, show people how you, yourself are using it in a practical way.
you'll have lots of different ways that you communicate with your team at scale. You know, so maybe you have a, you know, I think some, somebody did it all right, a weekly recap or something like that. Yeah, you have your all hands meetings. You have your own your staff meeting you have just your Various incidental conversations that you might have with you with your engineers and you're always just fine trying to find ways to refer back to How you might use the this strategy to inform your decision making.
So you can put that in. Maybe this week you're going to talk about it in your newsletter and the next week it goes in the all hands. Or when you're just talking to someone one to one, you're like, well, you know, this is a hard problem. Let's see if our strategy helps us. sort of do it through.
You don't want to overuse it because then you're just, you know, going to seem quite peculiar, I suppose, to you. but there were, you know, if your strategy is good, there's going to be lots of very natural organic moments where you can refer to it. Um, and you also just sort of set the expectation that, If people see that referring to the strategy and using it to make their case for a given point, an effective way to make your case, then think that can be, you know, it's very reinforcing.
[00:34:50] Lena: And you can also set an expectation around that even and say, you know, like for whatever investments you want to make or whatnot, like, please, you know, explain how those connect to
[00:34:57] Neil: yeah, like help me see how this
would be.so that's kind of what I mean, just trying to find little ways to just keep that conversation alive, encourage your direct reports to do the same sort of thing. And you,and you show them how to do it by role modeling, because it does feel a little bit awkward sometimes to say, let's pull down the sacred tome.
And it's,
[00:35:17] Lena: but I think it's important, like, yeah.
[00:35:20] Neil: but, you know, if someone was trying to make a pitch for, you know, Staffing say they want to they won't open up a role and you say right strategically what we're trying to do is
[00:35:28] Lena: Hire a donut baker.
[00:35:30] Neil: Yeah, right. where does that donut
[00:35:32] Lena: on that pretzel business. I'm sorry. I love pretzels.
[00:35:35] Neil: I love donuts, but we're not doing it. Or, um, so, so you can, yeah, you
[00:35:42] Lena: Someone's trying to make a pitch for us, bringing in a new, like, yeah,
[00:35:46] Neil: So, so, okay, let's see how the strategy plays into this. and I think that can be a very powerful way to just try and, really internalize it. amongst everyone, such that at some point, people don't, you're not even really saying, let's look at the strategy. It's just everyone understands
where we stand on donut making, or at least pretzels are number one, you know, like,
[00:36:07] Lena: one on the
[00:36:08] Neil: right. so given the pretzels are number one and we all know this, we, we don't necessarily need to refer to the strategy anymore because we all, we're all really sure what pretzels are number one. that's right.
[00:36:19] Lena: every day.
[00:36:20] Neil: and even though it's painful, that does mean that we're not going to do any donuts today. but you know, there might be some caveats on context where we might want to go down the donut route, but this would have to be true and this would have to be true and this third thing has to be true and this third thing isn't true yet.
[00:36:34] Lena: Mm hmm.
[00:36:36] Neil: your donut
[00:36:37] Lena: Yeah, or we use the pretzel dough to make pretzel rolls instead of. pretzel shaped.
Like, but that again would have to be a decision because it might like take customers away who are interested in pretzels only, because of the shape and the crispy surface.
I feel like I should talk about pretzels more maybe outside of this room, but like, I, you know, I'm honestly, also realizing that like, I really like the many examples you're giving us sort of making this very concrete because, you know, ultimately, obviously it's like, yeah, ensuring alignment, building alignment, whatnot, but like, Honestly, like a lot of people really struggle to know what that actually means.
and so I also honestly wanted to kind of close the loop back to what you kind of started with your definition. I heard you define as you know, like everyone agreeing, on kind of what we're doing and, but, I'd like that like multiple times. I also heard from you, like, Yeah, like some people may not think that pretzels are number one.
Like some people may think, well, I prefer donuts, or I prefer, no, I can't think of any pastry for the flapjacks.
We're in the UK, we're just rolling with it. but like that person like still needs to focus on making pretzels because that is ultimately what the company is trying to do. And so I do, you know, I thought it was interesting news to me that I agree.
Initially, I thought that everyone, you know, basically has the same opinion. but I don't think that's what you meant. I guess it's agreeing in the sense that everyone understands and is then making, like taking actions and making decisions that are,contributing to that. I'm trying not to say a line with that.
[00:38:11] Neil: Yeah, yeah, it's having a set of truths for this business. And whenever you engage in a conversation, you have trust that the other person takes those truths as a given. And that's our foundation for the conversation we're going to have.
[00:38:27] Lena: Mm
[00:38:29] Neil: doughnut conversation once more, we've already done that.
We've got our personal opinions on it, but as an organization, this is our ground truth.that then enables you to move much faster through your decision making at a leadership level, but also further down the organization as well. And it's that, speed of decision making further down the organization, I think is what you really want.
that's where the real value is going to come from.
[00:38:51] Lena: I do want to kind of, as a last thing, I do want to ask a bit about basically how you, Like the sort of, observability aspects essentially around, like, how do you in very practical ways, maybe you have some examples, but like, how do you basically continue ensuring alignment?
Cause you also think very early on mentioned, like it's kind of, basically it's an ongoing process. It's not a, we roll this thing out, we share this document with everyone and then boom aligned. but so how do you, you know, what are your markers, or metrics? Like, how do you observe? Qualitatively or however that like alignment is idea, you know, still given or that there might be like some first signs of misalignment.
[00:39:31] Neil: I think it's going back to where we were earlier when you see something isn't quite working for a given team and youand that will be manifest by that they're not achieving what they're trying to achieve or what you want them to achieve. And you, and so you know managerially you take note of that and you try and understand a bit more.
Trying to think through, well, you know, often it's due to a lack of context. And they're making good decisions based on what they understand, but what they understand is insufficient in the context of the broader company. And then asking yourself, well, why? Why don't they have that context? I mean, it's a failure of management.
Like, it's a failure of communication. they didn't know this fact that you believed everyone would know by now because you feel like you've said it 27 million times, and they don't know this. Well,
As frustrating as that might be, that's still your fault as a leader. Like, like, why didn't, why, why don't they know this? Yeah, and you can then go, you can try and debug that and think, well, what would have to have been different so that this person did know that thing? Because if they had known it, then they might have made a different decision. And then you go through your, you understand where the break in communication happened.
and that could just be a, just poorly chosen words. I mean, sometimes, you know, when I work living in a world where remote work is much, much more common. You,I mean, being based in London. We've always had, lots and lots of different cultures to, to work with and lots of people, your English will be the sort of common language, but, second language for most of your colleagues.
And there's all sorts of words that translate quite well, but in a different way. And definitely as a native English speaker, you'll be, we love our idioms. We've got a lot of
them and they don't translate and you can be really easily be misunderstood and you don't realize that you're being misunderstood,
[00:41:22] Lena: Or even take the, you know, earlier, like, everyone agrees that means alignment.
[00:41:25] Neil: right, right.
[00:41:26] Lena: again, English isn't my, my first language either. yes. You know, just very small example. But those kinds of things
[00:41:32] Neil: it's so, yeah,it's so easy. I mean the sort of classic one, was, I was in an interview once and it was a management interview and we were talking about conflict. How do you manage conflict? And the person I was talking to,this,they were French. I think the way that they understood that word was different. It was much more ferocious.
It was much,
yeah, yeah, it was like a war sort of, sort of, sort of usage. And so, you know, you're interviewing an engineering manager and saying, oh, tell me about a time you had to deal with a conflict and they said, I've never had a conflict.
[00:42:05] Lena: yeah.
[00:42:06] Neil: I think,
[00:42:06] Lena: And that is like, technically in a sort of, there's never been a disagreement in my management career. If you look at it from that angle, that is honestly, it's a red flag for
[00:42:15] Neil: well, of course, I was baffled when the
person said this, like you, this person was doing really well in the interview. And then they just said, never had a conflict. It was like, are you sure? and then, I've talked about it a bit more and I had a bit, but even a chat with, um, some of my French colleagues and said, like, do you have any idea what happened there that went wrong?
And we talked it through and we realized, So the point was a very small turning language can create the gap. So your question was, How do you sort of maintain this? How do you keep this going? I think you just have to keep attacking your problems with a view to if someone is making a decision that you can't understand, why are they doing that?
What context do they have that is different to your context? Maybe they actually know something you don't and they're making the right decision. You know,
[00:42:56] Lena: And that can also be bad. Yeah, they're not always wrong.
[00:42:59] Neil: Yeah. Yeah. Heaven forbid. They're smart people. They
sometimes, actually quite often, they quite often know this world better than you do.but the other thing though is when you write your engineering strategy, You need to update it every so often. So you do get a sort of natural cadence in a moment when you're allowed to revisit it. You should through the course of the year, just give a, an update on, well, how are we doing on our strategy?
We've got all these actions that we defined. Are we actually doing any of those? How true are we being to our guiding principles?maybe you could even survey mid year on something like that
[00:43:34] Lena: Right. Quarterly check in
[00:43:36] Neil: yeah, is this actually true? Did we achieve it or not?
[00:43:38] Lena: And, And
do people feel like they're, you know, still contributing to the strategy basically? I think that they
[00:43:43] Neil: yeah, and if it, and if you're not being true to your strategy, they've got a real good channel to tell you so and say, look, this guiding principle sounds great, but we do not live it. Here's three examples where we don't do it.so, so I think you can do those kinds of things. And keep trying to engage the team on this point and keep giving, you know, if there are enough examples where someone has called out, a flaw or something that's now missing because we've evolved and they can see that got put in to the strategy, then I think that could be quite engaging because it's then, okay, this is our strategy.
This isn't just something that's being handed to me. I mean, it's a big, scary document. but if I really felt passionately that I It was, deficient somehow. I can get that, I can make that case and at least have a conversation about it. So I think that's how you maintain it and keep it going and how you observe its, effectiveness.
it, but it applies further up the organization as well, because, you know, particularly in engineering context, you're working alongside product people and designers. And you've all got different reporting lines. So checking how those groups of people are interacting, I think is really key to this because if they can move quickly with confidence in their decision making, then you've probably got it right.
if they're finding it really hard to find common ground, well, It could be a local problem, but it's probably a management problem. It's probably a leadership problem.
[00:45:02] Lena: I honestly do think, there is a lot of like, basically small signals that I've heard, you know, from you in
[00:45:07] Neil: Yeah, yeah, I think so.
[00:45:08] Lena: our flag, how are things going? And then, which honestly, I think most leaders like pick up on anyway, like that's part of the job, but then the next step I think is so important to basically look, well, could this be a misalignment issue?
Because I think honestly, also our minds may not go to that place as kind of the first. thing that we say, Oh, you know, yeah, of course, if people are all disagreeing and they can't figure it out, it's again, not because they're incompetent, I really do generally also work with our company. I feel like I'm saying those kinds of things about, but I know honestly, because I like in all earnest, like a lot of people still think that even though they know that they work with competent people, but that again, Use that as a signal to think, oh yeah, are we all still aligned?
And then you can, if that's the case, then you can figure out where, what else might be going wrong. I see the other part that I wanted to just emphasize as well as essentially that, you know, you mentioned earlier that like, yeah, you say things 27 million times. I think that was actually the number you used.
[00:46:06] Neil: Yep. Yeah, exactly
[00:46:06] Lena: that is, the, that is the takeaway from this podcast, like 27 million is the bar. Um, but like, um, I guess I often joke at this point, sometimes like, Oh yeah, I'm the coach here. That's why I get to ask the coachie questions. And you don't say, Oh, you know, what problem are we trying to solve or what goal are we pursuing?
And it's, it often I feel often really silly, but also I think 95 percent of the time when I asked this question actually turns out, yeah,
no one really knows. And so, you know, there are a lot of things where honestly
it can really help to. remember that a lot of the basic stuff that reads really simple, like, yeah, build alignment, of course.
It's just, it's a lot of work and it's a lot of good habits. And it's a lot of sort of staying
[00:46:45] Neil: it. It's habits. Yeah, that's a really good way to put it. when you just stop thinking about it, you just are doing it because it's a
[00:46:51] Lena: it starts slipping away kind of, it's like the dead man switch in a, like on a, I think on subways,
they have that, for example, where there's an operator where you can, if you have to constantly hold it I'm not in mechanics and I don't, do you know how that means, which actually works?
[00:47:04] Neil: yeah, you have to consistently apply some activity to keep it where it is. And the moment
[00:47:10] Lena: let it know that you're still alive. It's really, that's, I think that's,
[00:47:14] Neil: yeah. I don't know how they, you know,
[00:47:16] Lena: Mechanically, yeah, we will, we can probably add something to the show notes.
[00:47:19] Neil: but uh,
[00:47:21] Lena: Yeah. But that's what it feels to me. Like, you have to, like, It's not the only thing you'll do as a leader, but it needs to be very routine.
Or whatever, like, I was honestly thinking in, like, public restrooms, for example, like we're in the seminar building here, branch four. they have on the wall somewhere, honestly, my building, they have a two, there's a plan break, you know, twice a week, there's a cleaning service, like with folks that come by and maintain the surroundings.
And there's every twice a week, there's an entry with like someone, you know, at state and signs. That's honestly what it feels like to me, there is a very, like, there's a routine to it.
[00:47:55] Neil: yep, for sure. yeah, and you've just got to get it to the point where you're not really thinking about it, but that routine is always happening.
[00:48:02] Lena: Right. But I feel like theas someone with like neurodivergences the sort of not thinking of things, it's just, it's not a, like, it's not a thing. Things exist in my calendar or they don't.
[00:48:11] Neil: Right, right, okay.
[00:48:12] Lena: I'm honestly just, you know, I think that is a good statement. Also, like, I don't want to strive to that because I know that's going to go really horribly for me.
[00:48:18] Neil: I'm kind of the same in as much as, you know, everything's, everything gets squeezed out. And so the, I think that, having some fixed signposts that you were pre-com committing to, like whatever.
[00:48:31] Lena: It's like the, an OKR cycle, for example, or,
[00:48:34] Neil: Yeah. That's a really good
[00:48:35] Lena: things like that. That's what they actually are like helpful tools for.
[00:48:38] Neil: Yeah. So you have a sort of plumb in retrospection thing, and you'd have to consciously not do it.
[00:48:45] Lena: Like a cadence where you don't have to actively think of it, but it still happens.
[00:48:49] Neil: Yeah, it's there you are in that moment of retrospection.
And in order to not retrospect, you would actually have to consciously say, right now I'm not going to retrospect and that's not what
hopefully, yeah, that's hopefully not what you're going to do. You're going to go, Oh, I'm in my retrospective moment.
I will now go and do this. how are we doing against our strategy and try and get that feedback from your team.
[00:49:08] Lena: Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, I like to call that just leadership hygiene. I think that's why I went to the like, um, like room maintenance and house maintenance.
Um, this was really good. I'm really want to make sure you can also actually talk to people at the conference.
Is there anything else that we haven't covered on alignment that you really want to share?
[00:49:26] Neil: I mean, I think that, you know, when you are originally rolling this stuff out, you have to get to the point where people get bored to tears with you talking about it.
And the way that IF find that you might, you make a joke about that and you say, look, I'm, if you are still. tolerating me talking to you in this way, then I haven't said it enough and I'm sorry.
I'm going to keep going. And you're going to hear from me in all these different places. And I'm just going to keep going until everybody is. is bored to
[00:49:56] Lena: Yeah. And tells me to like, shut the heck up. Or they, or I quit this strong thing.
[00:50:02] Neil: And you make a little joke about it because then when you do pop up again and again, they're like
[00:50:06] Lena: me again.
[00:50:08] Neil: All right.
[00:50:09] Lena: still here.
[00:50:09] Neil: Yeah. You know, he's here again, but he did say he's going to do this and we sort of understand why. And maybe it's not 27 million, but it's probably at least seven times, right?
Like you've got to, you've got to, you've got to make it feel like 27
[00:50:24] Lena: And I will say that my, my reference in that is I talk about this a lot in this change management context as well as like, once you get tired of saying it, assume that about 70 percent of people have heard it.
[00:50:36] Neil: Right, that's
it. Actually, that's a really good point, isn't it? It's not just the person receiving it is getting tired of it. You yourself, as the leader, are miserable. About just
[00:50:50] Lena: I really sometimes, I'm like, I really, I can hear myself talking in a, like, really, you know, sort of delay by one sentence where I'm like, oh man, like, I really want to, like, do all this, stuff again. Yeah, exactly. Like, can we, Like, please talk about, like, or other, you know, French pastry already, like pretzels are just done
So I think that's a really good point. Like the, yeah, talk about it more than once, maybe under 27 million times somewhere in the spectrum,
[00:51:17] Neil: ha.
[00:51:19] Lena: it depends like whatever works for you. so how do you actually feel about pretzels?
[00:51:25] Neil: I'm saying I'm like, warmly disposed. I'm not, I don't think I want to make that my, my,my goal for the next
[00:51:32] Lena: business.
[00:51:33] Neil: I mean, where we've gone through this process, we haven't actually mentioned pretzels in the strategy anywhere. It's almost like a totally orthogonal
[00:51:41] Lena: Wow.
[00:51:42] Neil: Yeah. I mean, I'm starting
[00:51:43] Lena: This seems like a big gap. I feel like there's a market right here and I'm pointing at
myself. That is, I mean, that is like disappointing, but fair since you are in the software business, I guess that's
[00:51:57] Neil: we just don't have a pretzel strategy at all. Right.
[00:52:00] Lena: That makes sense. And what other, baked good would be your next number one?
[00:52:05] Neil: The worst thing is it is flapjack.
[00:52:11] Lena: I coerced you somehow into like just playing to all the stereotypes about this country.
[00:52:17] Neil: I didn't even realize until we talked today that flapjack was a British thing. I just assumed that was a ubiquitous thing across all culture.
[00:52:25] Lena: Like, let me Google this on the side so we can just add some knowledge to this and I don't just have to, like, make a note,to add this after the fact.the flapjacked origin. okay, so etymology is early 17th century, from flap in the dialect sense, toss a pancake. Jack, like that's the second one. Second part of it sends, like dates from the 1930s and it's probably a regional coin. flapjack in, in parentheses oat bar. Yep. Also known as cereal bar, oat bar, or all sliced is a baked bar cooked in a flat oven in tin and cut into spares or rectangles. Um, wait. History. Shakespeare refers to flapjacks okay.
So Wikipedia is not actually as conclusive as I, yeah, we have cereal bars in Germany, but they're also, they're not the same entirely. but you do like a flapjack.
[00:53:16] Neil: Yeah. That's pretty, pretty much go to..
[00:53:18] Lena: I do like flapjacks too. I've been on a quest to like make really good ones at home. that and oatmeal cookies, but yeah. You can see that. Thank you so much. This was,
[00:53:29] Neil: Thank you.
Closing thoughts
Lena: The tough reality, as we all know, like with so many other things in leadership, is that alignment is not just a one-time exercise, but a continuous process that requires constant maintenance and checking in. I love Neil's practical approach, which moves much beyond those abstract concepts, but shows instead how alignment directly impacts your team's effectiveness.
And how you can take responsibility for creating that kind of clarity. So if you like, pretty much any other company struggles with alignment in your organization, here are a few takeaways. First, remember that solving alignment issues requires looking up your organization, not just down. Small misalignments at executive and senior leadership level become major gaps at team levels.
So address them early if you can.
Make your strategy actionable by testing it with concrete examples and maintain alignment by talking about your strategy again, at least every couple of weeks. Check if the work that's done on your team still goes in the direction that you are set out to move into. Successful alignment means the teams can use your strategy to make decisions without constantly having to escalate to you or your boss or people above.
So your strategy document isn't just a one use item. Return to it over and over to tech if it's still useful, still working, and make team tweaks as you learn along the way.
And I'll say it again. Never stop talking about strategy. Remember, when you can't stand listening to yourself talk about it anymore, that's probably when about 70% of people have actually heard it.
So keep going.
Leadership Confidential was created, produced, and presented by me, Lena Reinhard. Theme, original composition, and mixing by Esteban del Pino. Production assistance, guest support, and social media by Sly Stark.
Thank you for listening.
