Top 3 Problems New Engineering Leaders Face!

One of the most important things for an engineering leader is to build trust as you start. In this video, I'll be sharing the most common challenges engineering leaders face when they start with a new role and how to solve them. Those are the exact most common challenges I saw in the last 2 years consulting and also advising multiple companies. If you don't know me yet, my name is Gregor Ojstersek and I am the founder of Engineering Leadership Newsletter. Now let's get straight into today's topic. All right, um, let's, let's first talk about a bit about what kind of challenges, uh, are you normally seeing as a, as a new engineering leader. So as I mentioned, those are the exact challenges I have saw, uh, working with multiple companies. And you normally, when you start a new role as an engineering leader, you have one-to-ones with the key stakeholders, with your engineering team, and also other departments. And what I, what I suggest to do is one, when you have this one-to-one meetings, um, you want to make sure that you, you note down everything that they have told you that is pressing to them. There is a problem, there is a challenge, and so on. That's how you see opportunities on, on particular things, on how you can improve things across the company. And also one of the important things is to don't try to make any kind of big, big change changes before you understand what's actually happening in, in the, in the company. And what are the, where are the common challenges? What are the common, common things that are across the company? And so on. You need to understand and get context of various different things before you, you can make, you know, those really big changes. So for example, you, you discussed with key stakeholders, you had like different one-to-ones with the key stakeholders. And they told you that AI adoption is something that they are worried about, their competition, the companies that are competitors, they're worried that they might be ahead of your company. And then obviously, of course, growth, revenue, and profit, those are always going to be one of the key things that stakeholders are going to try try to improve, of course. And also, you know, engineering priorities aligned with business. They're worried about engineering not doing things that is aligned with business vision and also business challenges and so on. And then once you discuss with team leads, tech leads, engineers inside your team, you see that a lot of the people are worried about unrealistic AI expectations coming from company leaders, thinking that, believing that AI is a magical tool to solve any kinds of problems. And then also they believe that they have some sort of a pressure to deliver faster. And also constant change of requirements, you know, there comes like sprints after sprints of different things they're working on, not like a concrete project that are going to move the needle, you know, those really important projects. Also, non-transparency on company vision and goals. They believe that they don't understand fully, you know, the business vision and where, where the company is going and so on. And also, they believe that they don't have enough time for experimenting, and that goes along with AI adoption, unrealistic expectation. You need, you need time for experimentation if you're trying to, if you're trying to include a new AI tool in the process. So, you know, that makes a lot of sense here. And then also talking with other departments, you get a feeling that they have a lack of understanding of what engineering actually does on a daily basis. And also they believe that their requests are not getting honored by engineering. They have certain asks, they have certain, you know, feedback and certain problems and challenges, and they feel like that their requests are not getting listened. And then also, this is also connected with this, they believe that engineering is not building the right things for them. So obviously, every department like sales, marketing, compliance, they all have certain things that they would like to, certain initiatives that they would like to move forward with. But obviously, it's a big challenge for engineering to try to prioritize those initiatives. And this is something that obviously needs to be improved in order to have more transparency and more overall view of, you know, everyone have a holistic view on what engineering is doing. Also important thing to mention is, you know, predictable and transparent engineering organization is really a big asset for the business. So these are your notes as a new engineering leader that when you have discussed with, you know, with key stakeholders, engineering team, and also other departments. I also try to always, when I'm doing this, I try to make it as, you know, as clear as possible so I can then later map together opportunities, right? So we will talk about next about specific opportunities we have when we saw these challenges, right? So what I try to do here in this case is how can I map together certain things that we can solve them together? So for example, So you see this one in yellow, yellow mark. We can see those are all connected with each other, which is AI adoption is a problem for key stakeholders, and engineering team has a problem with unrealistic AI expectations, and then also not enough time for experimentation. So yeah, this is one thing that we are going to look at it together. Then the next thing is engineering priorities aligned with the business, pressure to deliver faster, and lack of understanding of what engineering does. So this is some kind of like a We need to improve the process, we need to improve the visibility, and we need to improve the transparency of what engineering does, and also make sure that everyone understands like what is the priority number 1, number 2, number 3, number 4. And then we also need to share our progress regularly. I think, you know, a lot of times companies are having problems with engineering sharing what is actually new, what is something that has been delivered in, in the last couple of weeks, and so on. And, you know, because a lot of people don't see that. They don't have that, that complete overview of what engineering actually does on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, and so on. And then also constant change of requirements. The requests are not getting honored by engineering. Engineering is not building the right things for them. Those are all connected also with the process. How can we make our process better, more transparent? How can we involve every particular stakeholder when we are discussing priorities? And so on. We will look at these opportunities right after. Those are the 3 main opportunities that we have now done in yellow, blue, and in gray color. And then we have with the black color, those are kind of like one-off opportunities. Obviously, you know, growth, revenue, and profit, those are always going to be in mind in stakeholders. So this is not just specific to one company. And this is what you always, as an engineering leader, is going to work towards. Always keep in mind that Um, yeah, it's, it's also very important for you as an engineering leader to focus on, on, on this, on these specific things. It's because at the end of the day, uh, there is no engineering without, without business. And, uh, if, if the business is not working well, then engineering is not working well as well. Very, very important. So the goal of engineering is to, you know, obviously also improve the growth, revenue, and also profit for the company as well. And then also non-transparency on company vision and goals. That's another kind of like a one-off improvement we can do. You know, the way I would approach this is I would tell key stakeholders to talk more about, you know, business goals, business challenges, business vision in the all-hands meeting. Then also I would make sure that we would regularly be sharing some business insights on engineering internal meetings as well. Those are kind of things I would look at here. Okay, now let's take a look the outcomes of mapping together and what kind of opportunities we can implement in order to solve these challenges. So for example, you know, as we mentioned in this yellow, in this yellow color, we defined that the managing expectations from stakeholders is a problem. Being the voice of reason regarding AI and, you know, giving more time to experiment with AI tools. That's what we want to improve. So let's first talk about how to, you know, manage the expectations from stakeholders. The way to go here is to understand the why. What is the actual problem that they have? You know, why do they feel that they are, they have that fear, fear of missing out regarding AI? I would really try to understand the why here. What problems are we trying to solve? That's a really great question to ask what are the pain points or bottlenecks, what's actually, you know, being a problem for you. And also, you know, you want to ask yourself and also, you know, you want to ask everyone in the business, you know, is AI really the right tool for this? Because it's not a one tool that is going to solve all the problems, but it's going to definitely help in some specific cases, but it's not going to be a magical tool that is going to make everything better. So that's how I would approach this part. And then also, you know, you want to be confident, you want to be credible, you want to build your credibility as much as possible when you're discussing these AI expectations. You want to be the voice of reason regarding AI. You want to educate, you want to teach, you want to share knowledge about what's possible and what's not possible. And you know, that's where being confident is very, very important in current times. Giving more time to experiment with AI tools. Yeah, what I would do here is I would look for, you know, different AI champions across the company. You know, who are the most people that are interested in AI tools the most. And I will look to provide them with more time to actually experiment and try to find out different opportunities for us. And then also these people would be sharing knowledge across the company of what new have they found and then also help others to become better at those specific tools. They would be also sharing the insights either via Slack channels, you know, any kind of other medias and so on. Also what I would look at is I would look at to include like a regular knowledge sharing sessions across the whole company where everyone can, you know, share a certain new thing they have learned or maybe they have found a new thing. So I would do this company-wide and everyone has an opportunity to share knowledge here. I would do it it like maybe once every 2 weeks or maybe once a month. It depends how many people would be, would be sharing and also the size of the company as well. And then also a great thing here is, and it's also really, really fun thing to do, is, you know, implement a hackathon where you share like some kind of like a bit, some kind of business problems, and then people will try to find solutions to those business problems. They can be AI related or not. The goal here is to, you know, define like specific different specific business problems and then ask different teams to find solutions for them. That's a really fun kind of initiative that can spark people to experiment more and look for new ways to solve problems. Okay, let's go to the second opportunity, which is more transparency on what we are working on, what will be worked on, and also when people can expect it to be done. As you remember, this was one of the problems as we, as we discussed here. So the way I would approach it is that, you know, we need some more transparency. And I had a really good, a lot of great examples where a sprint demo meeting has done wonders for the company and also for the engineering organization. Because when people actually see what is new, they get a much better overview of what engineering does on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, and so on. So this is a really great, great initiative. And if a company doesn't do that yet, I would look to include it. The way I would approach it is I would be then having a conversation with the team leads or engineering managers of the teams. And then I would also define what kind of the expectation is for the format of the meeting and so on.. And yeah, I had a really great, had a really great experience with it on different projects. And then also we need some kind of a roadmap vision. So at least people know like what they can expect in, let's say, in the next 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 5 months, 6 months, and so on. At least some kind of a plan of future work. We don't need to have like everything mapped altogether and we have all the, you know, epics and user stories ready and so on. No, I think that's, that's too much in detail, especially, you know, it depends also on the size of the company as well. If the company is bigger, then yeah, that may be, may be the case. But if it's a smaller company, then I think that that is an overkill. And then the next one is, you know, if the company is already doing OKRs, it's really important that you connect your engineering OKRs to, to company-wide OKRs because at the end of the day, We are all here to, to, to make the company and the business as successful as possible. That is another thing I would look at is, hey, how can we map our engineering initiatives to company-wide goals and plans? All right, now let's take a look at the third thing, which is we need a better process for delivering new iterations and being more predictable. We also need to better manage expectations of what will be done and what will not be done. So the way I would look at it here is we need some kind of like an agreement of what's actually going to be worked on and whatnot. And that's where like a roadmap vision helps a lot. And then also kind of sprint prep planning alignment is going to do wonders here as you, you get in touch with, you know, different stakeholders that have different initiatives in mind. Because the thing is, as an engineering organization, you can't handle all the, all the incoming requests, right? So you need to prioritize the best as possible, and the best way to do it is to be transparent of, you know, and getting key stakeholders on the same page. And yeah, that's where roadmap vision helps a lot, and also pre-planning alignment and so on. And then also I would look to make sure that everyone can check the progress anytime, you know. You make sure that everyone can see where our springboards are, where our where tickets and user stories are, that they can check the progress of a particular item anytime. I would also make sure that it's being transparent as much as possible. Because as I mentioned before, predictable and transparent engineering organization is really, really a big asset for the business. And also you, for you as an engineering leader, you want to be as transparent as possible because you don't want to be a bottleneck where stakeholders and people from various different departments are going to be coming to you for questions all the time and so on. You want to make it easy as possible for people to know what is being worked on, when it can be expected to be delivered, and also what is the progress on that specific thing. And then also, you know, making sure that the progress is being transparent. Updating OKRs regularly is a really big thing as well. So as soon as you see there's a certain new milestone happening in, in, in, in progress of a particular project, you you project, you want to also update that so everyone can see, okay, hey, engineering is already at this step in this project and so on. So yeah, I hope this was helpful to you. If this is something that has been, you know, interesting, there are a lot more you know, other challenges across the engineering organizations. But those are kind of like the most common challenges I see across different companies. And those are some of the, you know, my mindset on how to, how to solve them. So yeah, I hope that this was helpful to you. And if you're not, if you're not a subscriber yet, make sure to check out my newsletter. It's called Engineering Leadership. There are more than 165,000 people already reading it. And also I publish 2 new articles every week. Um, and yeah, thanks a lot for watching, and I'll see you on the next one.