Roads to right answers
The greatest form of optimism in Tech is teaching
My mother was a French teacher at public schools for over twenty years. I was stubborn and never learned. It’s one of my earliest regrets.
She did teach me other things. How profound the impact of teaching is. How people learn more from who you are than what you teach. How to help others find their strengths, wipe away tears and conquer demons. The roads to right answers.
Years after she retired her students still called on her. Happy to share how their life had played out and the impact she had on them. How the importance of belief in them lasted longer than the tools she once equipped.
The things ordained for you—teach yourself to be at one with those. And the people who share them with you—treat them with love. With real love. - VI. 39
Before Tech, I was lucky to start my career in corporate consulting. It was the best post graduate education. I learned how business worked, how to synthesize diverse streams of information, manipulate symbols (i.e. build presentations), present that information, network through mutual value exchange, deal with objection and different points of view. All via exposure to levels of decision making and leaders that aren’t commonly offered in other roles so young.
I had great teachers by different names.
Consulting, especially corporate strategy and operational flavors, operates as a series of apprenticeships. It’s highly human capital intensive. It requires learning the craft from masters and is done through successive client engagements or “cases”.
But this meditation isn’t about that.
When I entered Tech just over a decade ago gaps were obvious. Very bright, very motivated, very capable individuals practiced their craft. These highly competent product managers, engineers, data scientists, etc all understood their discipline. Their outputs created impact against functional OKRs and other goal structuring frameworks.
But many never really learned nor were they taught how their businesses truly worked.
The basic mechanics of profit and loss, how to read a balance sheet, the importance of cash flows. The business model of the business and it’s tendrils. Many struggled with the political dynamics governing how to get promoted. Others weren’t cultivating relationships outside of their direct teams. Few succeeded to market themselves, their abilities and how they could or did contribute to the bottom line.
Today’s Tech organizations, beyond the products we build, grow and commercialize are some of the most complex products ever built.
Understanding how value is created, the role strategy plays in it’s creation and the essence of how businesses produce return on investment through deploying capital and building organizational execution capability is chronically under taught. We shouldn’t depend or expect high priced MBA degrees to fill the gap.
As leaders, whether in the C-Suite or otherwise, we know the power of great teaching in action and what it can do. How employees clamor to understand the financial health of the business, where and how value is created and what keeps customers happy, healthy and coming back for more. How their work truly fits in. What the organization truly values through how it hires, fires and promotes.
It’s become so easy to focus on how the vision and promise of the organization’s products will “change the world” and then forget that the people powering the business need their world of understanding changed too. Because in Tech, with gross margins and capital costs generally lower than in other sectors, people are the business (at least in terms of where the vast majority of costs go).
The acute sharpness and snap back to sobriety from the market’s last decade drunk on easy money has been a cruel teacher. Indeed hundreds of thousands of those working in Tech have been caught up in 2024’s newfound temperance.
And so we learn. But like the Great Recession in 2008 so too will this business cycle pass.
Our future in Tech, business, life requires teaching and great teachers. Those who can motivate, inspire and lead. Who help us pave roads to the right answers through their questioning. Who take a personal interest in the holistic development of their organizations and the people in them: playing one part psychologist, one part sociologist. And those in the highest ranks and roles across organizations are best positioned to do so.
Final Thoughts Questions
For executives and organization leaders:
What is your curriculum for the next quarter? How will you conduct your seminars? Will you use town halls, business reviews? Other forums?
When was the last time you diagnosed where you were and shared it?
Have you taken on mentees, explicitly? What about a shadow program?
What is your level of understanding of a day in the life of an employee? How will you bolster it?
What information can be more openly shared, distilled and made available?
For independent contributors:
Have you received a syllabus? If not, will you create one?
Who in your organization can you learn from? If not your direct leader, someone else? What about a mentor?
How deeply do you understand the business model, strategy and investment horizon of where you work? Do you know how annual planning works?
Do you really know your leaders and what makes them tick? On a personal level? How will you use your next 1:1 to probe deeper?