People

You work for your team, they work for the product. People are all that matters.

People solve problems, build software, and take decisions. Yet, many leaders focus on how the code works, which tools to use, and which decisions to make for their teams.

This leadership style doesn't work: it frustrates the people doing the job, they always have more context about the tiny details than their leaders. This style doesn't scale either: there are too many decisions to make, too many features to build, too many technologies to try.

You need to leverage the collective intelligence of your teams which is why we build teams in the first place. You need to focus on what matters to build awesome products: the people building them.

Being a leader means you don't do any of the work your teams are responsible for. If you want to do any of those things, then you have the wrong job. Your job is to work for them, so they can unlock their full potential.

The natural starting point of building a healthy team is a healthy hiring pipeline. Hiring is often built on the wrong assumptions, so we have to talk about those assumptions and how to get rid of them in the first place before we can dive into hiring.