True North
Before the end of the year, I’m moving into a new role as advisor to AppDirect. Reflecting on my time as VP Engineering, I’m proud of all that we have accomplished together:
- We defined an Engineering Roadmap and made strides to improve our tooling, processes, and architecture.
- We established quarterly OKRs and KPIs, aligning the efforts of Engineering with the goals of the business.
- We improved team alignment within geographies and timezones to improve effectiveness. We reorganized our product teams to reflect our company priorities.
- We continued expansion of our Buenos Aires and India sites, and unified our Montréal teams into a single office.
- We delivered on our Product Roadmap objectives, including launching the AppReseller product.
- We created a Developer Productivity team, dedicated to improving the efficiency of our Engineering organization.
- We defined the career paths for our engineers, so they understand how to grow their careers at the company.
Beyond these tangible results, we also learned together. Here are the most important lessons that I want the team to retain:
Lesson 1: HOW
How you work is important. Your values should guide your words and actions. In the context of the AppDirect company values:
- Have the Humility to accept that your first answer may not be the best answer. Emphasize listening as much as your desire to be heard.
- Accept as True North what the data tells you about the success (or not) of initiatives. Define concrete success criteria through OKRs and KPIs.
- Positive Mental Attitude (“PMA”) is maintaining a solutions-oriented approach if faced with a challenge. It does not mean deluding yourself into thinking everything is perfect; don’t deny reality.
- Intensity means putting in the required effort — and sometimes moving quickly. Realize that acting too quickly is optimizing for Speed, not Accuracy; you may need to take corrective actions later.
- Always take Ownership of the situation. Don’t be afraid of tackling new challenges. But also take Ownership of setbacks and treat them as learning opportunities.
Lesson 2: FOCUS
Productivity is not only about doing more faster; productivity is also achieved through focus. And the quickest path to efficiency is eliminating wasted effort.
Chris Arsenault, an AppDirect board member, defines lack of focus as the result of lack of commitment:
More often then not, a “lack of focus” is the result of a “lack of commitment”. And if you can’t commit, then it becomes harder to get commitment from key employees, investors and partners. Just my two cents. #focus
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he chose to reduce the number of products at the company. Jobs reinvigorated Apple by deciding what NOT to do:
Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. That’s true for companies, and it’s true for products.
Focus your time and resources to make the most impact. Because if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority.
Lesson 3: ACCOUNTABILITY
Teams that use data to measure continuous improvement will ultimately win.
Always maintain accountability for yourself and your team. Leverage data to measure against desired outcomes. This can be applied to all disciplines in the company, including:
- Product (feature adoption, quality, customer satisfaction, revenue contribution)
- Engineering (predictability, velocity, scale, quality, performance)
- Sales (bookings, total revenue growth, customer churn)
- Marketing (lead generation & qualification, opportunity size)
- Customer Success (customer satisfaction, churn, support handle time, upsell/cross-sell)
Remember the broader team spans across geographies and other departments. You’re all in it together, so be accountable to one another.
Lesson 4: TRANSPARENCY
Be as transparent as possible, especially in a startup. Transparency is crucial to building trust and minimizing dysfunction.
In the absence of information, people create their own narratives. Strive to provide context, so everyone can recognize fact from fiction.
Team members can often help define better solutions. Be transparent with the problems you’re trying to solve and the constraints you face. Trust your team to help define a course of action — after all, that’s why you hired them!
Lesson 5: CHANGE
Realize that organizations change. Change in itself is neither good nor bad.
People join companies and people leave companies; either way, the team endures. Many changes compounded over time results in the evolution of the team, which is natural with the passage of time.
The opposite of change is stagnation, so don’t fear change — embrace it.
The Journey Ahead
My wish is for the team to continue learning. Reinforce prior lessons on how to improve focus, accountability, and transparency while adapting to the inevitable change.
I learn every day of my career.
My advice to the team: pack these lessons from AppDirect, retain them for your career journey, and stay aligned on True North.
