In a panel discussion, senior engineering leaders Madhav, John, and Janice share how their perspective changes as they move into senior vice‑president (SVP) roles. Madhav introduces the "first team" concept, explaining that senior leaders must broaden their focus from their direct reports to the entire organization—including product, marketing, finance, and HR—to solve for company‑wide outcomes. John emphasizes a shift in success measurement: rather than adding more metrics, he narrows focus to two core principles—delivering on commitments (the say‑do ratio) and fostering continuous improvement. He explains that predictability of roadmap delivery is more valuable than raw velocity, and that incremental, realistic improvement targets drive sustainable progress. Janice adds that engineers often possess the curiosity and cross‑functional learning ability needed for executive work, but must adopt a deliberate communication style and recognize that the whole company now looks to them for guidance. Across the conversation, themes of metric simplification, predictability, continuous improvement, and intentional leadership communication emerge as key hallmarks of the evolving engineering leadership mindset.
Chapters
You've probably seen, as you, as your role has changed, you know, that there's, you know, there's a kind of a meaningful perspective shift, um, as, as you go through those levels. And so I thought one thing that might be helpful just for, for the audience where we have, you know, 75-25 split, um, Maybe talk a little bit about, you know, what it's like to be an executive. I had a manager once who gave me— a boss, an executive boss who gave me this advice of like, hey, you need to go be an executive because without having some time in the seat, you don't fully appreciate it. I'd love to hear— I think that advice was useful. I think it's also a fair thing to talk about and you can be mentored to kind of understand it. And I think that perspective helps you in any capacity. So I'd love to hear, and I'll throw it to the whole group, Janice, John, and Madhav, can you offer a way in which your perspective has changed now that you're in this SVP role compared to previous roles?
Sure. Maybe I can start. If you have read the Patrick Lencioni book, The Advantage, he talks about the concept of what's your first team. Right? And what does that mean? Which team do you really solve for? Which team do you consider first when you need to make decisions? And from my experience, when I was a frontline manager, when I was a senior manager, and even at the director level, I always felt my first team was my own, the team that I managed directly and work with. Right? And I always used to solve for them first, their outcomes, the people issues, the technical issues, the process, everything around my team was most important. But that changed as I grew into slightly more senior leadership roles, especially as a Senior VP, where I've realized over the years that my first team is no longer just the team that I manage, but it's the broader team, right? It's broader team across not just in engineering, across product, marketing, finance, HR, all of the functions. And that truly opens up your eyes. You realize that you're solving for the bigger outcome for the company and not just for your team. You do continue to be accountable for your team, of course, right? That's part of your job. But your first team essentially becomes like the bigger organization. That I think is the biggest change that I've seen as I've grown in my career.
Thank you. John or Janice, anything to add on this?
Yeah, I think, you know, if those in the audience are similar to me in the career path, in the sense that you've gone from the individual contributor side to the managerial side and then up either or for that matter. You know, the— and what I constantly recognize is how I measure success, both for the business and the discipline of what we're trying to do, but also for myself, changes. My— I had a leader who once told me, and this was right as I had gone from architect to manager for the first time, and I was frustrated because I was like, I could— I think I could just do this faster myself. I'll just start coding. And it— you quickly realize that that's not the right way to do things because you also quickly realize that you need those people around you that can actually do the job better than you can in certain areas. And so having people around you and also knowing how to measure success on, on yourself and on the team drastically changes. I think Madhav was absolutely— is absolutely right. I mean, you know, how you're looking at your direct team and how that measures success and then how the broader organization success is measured, vastly different. And for me, what I find is also that more scope doesn't mean more metrics and more measurement on certain things. In fact, I almost take it the reverse. I almost simplify things. Like, there's very few few things that we really, really care about. And it boils down to, you know, the foundations of why your respective organization or company is alive and how do we move that mission forward. And so for me, it boils down to two very fundamental metrics that, that you want to get buy-in with the entire organization, whatever those metrics might be for for you. And for me, it is we deliver on— we do what we say we will do, um, the good old adage that probably parents probably taught us all at one point in time. Um, and we make a culture one day better than the, than the last. Um, and more often than not, if it's those two things, then most things fall into it, and all the other metrics become secondary or supporting metrics to those key philosophies for me.
Do you have a—
sorry, just to plus one the point on the fewer metrics. I think that's really important. And that's something I realized too earlier on. You look at a whole bunch of stuff and then as you grow, you realize it's way smaller. Focus on the top key, for instance.
Absolutely.
I was just going to ask if you had a way to, you know, so if your two things were you know, the say-do ratio or, you know, making sure you do what you say you're going to do. And then the second one was the continuous improvement one. You know, I wondered if you had a way to like, what's your gauge at the executive level to focus on continuous improvement?
Yeah, I mean, within, you know, and I think continuous improvement, that's also well said, right? I mean, yes, we want to have a metric of where we want to be at one point in time with whatever metric you want to set. But it's also unrealistic to say that we're going to do that tomorrow. So how are we going to get to that metric tomorrow? That becomes the baby step and much more achievable. And quite frankly, something that, you know, people don't get scared at or freak out at. Oh my gosh, we got to do 30% improvement on this. Holy smokes. No, no. Maybe let's just do 5% these 2 weeks. And so for us, for me, it is— it boils down to roadmap. We're a product-based company. And so, hey, we have a roadmap, we have a direction that we want to set on. The more, you know, there's kind of a first, you know, the first thought that you might have is, okay, we got to speed up the roadmap. And I would actually say, no, it's probably got to make more accurate depictions as to where we're going to achieve on the roadmap, be more accurate in our prediction and our predictability of how we can deliver on that roadmap. That becomes the first goal to solve. Then if we can have solid predictability, which is to say we do what we say we can do, then we can start looking at velocity changes. But predictability ends up becoming a more important thing, at least from what I've seen, than actual velocity.
That's a good, that's a good answer. And, and the point about like needing clarity before you can like measure anything, like sometimes there's just a communication gap and you skip the communication gap and then start arguing about like more or different, better, you know, we're not even talking about the same thing.
Absolutely.
Janice, did you wanna add any? Sorry.
Yeah, maybe I can jump in. So yeah, I mean, I love everything you're saying. I, you know, plus one, you know, the definitely agree on that. If I were to talk to myself maybe 5 years ago and like, what would I say? You know, I would say that actually being an engineer, I feel that I was I was well-equipped, actually more than I thought, to be part of an executive team, you know, in the sense that, you know, no one on a high-performing agile team is ever going to say like, we failed, but I succeeded, right? So, you know, some of those things that you guys are talking about, you're actually very, you know, there's always more to learn, there's always more to grow, but, you know, those skills of being curious and prepared to devote significant times, you know, time to areas outside your comfort zone. You know, when you start managing managers and you're trying to, you know, manage new functions that maybe you've never had experience with before, like, you know, for me it was data science. You know, I hadn't really been deeply into that. So, you know, plus one to all of that, but you might also be a little bit more prepared than you think. Everything about what you're saying in terms of, you know, empowerment and, you know, staying at the right level of detail and priority and data is, you know, really important and does become magnified, you know, at the executive level. The other thing I would just say is like, you know, your first job is to, or maybe one thing that I had to learn, you know, your first job is really just being a leader, right? Like, like, you know, all of a sudden the entire company is looking at you for guidance on, you know, what to do, how to act, you know, how to think, what to value, you know. And so just those very, you know, making sure that you're being really deliberate and informal in your communications about all those things, I think is another thing that kind of stands out to me.
