Decoding Leadership

Jade Rubick
  • 5.0 (5)
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY
Decoding Leadership

Decoding Leadership - where we break down the intersection of effective and humane leadership, especially in software product development (engineering, product, and design).

  1. APR 9

    23. Jim Gochee on banning "prioritization", and getting functions to work together

    In this episode of Decoding Leadership, host Jade interviews Jim Gochee, a seasoned expert in the software industry with a rich career spanning roles from engineer to CEO. They cover the controversial decision to ban the word 'prioritization' at Blameless, and go into some detail about how to get people to work well across departments. They discuss anti-patterns and common ruts in product and engineering interactions, the significance of clear goal-setting to unify teams, and the impact of understanding different roles within a company. Finally, Jim offers advice on leadership transitions, the role of curiosity and growth mindset in career progression, and the value of coaching and mentorship.

    58 min

  2. MAR 26

    22. James Shore: what if we scaled our teams to unreasonable sizes?

    Jim and I sit down and talk about his successful engagement at New Relic, where he brought modern autonomous team approaches the company. Jim shares how he has been doing it differently over the last few years, using an approach called Fluid Scaling Technology (FaST). We explore some parts of implementing FaST that I don’t believe are discussed anywhere else, such as how management works differently in an environment using FaST. And Jim shares how his recent engagement as a VP of Engineering has shaped his recent leadership work.

    47 min

  3. MAR 12

    21. Jayanthan Bhattathiripad on introducing yourself, XP and Scrum, and waste

    In this episode, we talk with Jayanthan Bhattatharapad. Jay has a very interesting way of introducing himself to his teams and organization, and I asked him to demo it to us. In doing so, he shares not only this interesting practice, but lots of tidbits about how he sees leadership. We had a fascinating discussion, can't wait to share it with you! * Jay's career journey from consulting at ThoughtWorks to Expedia, to his recent role at Cisco. * The importance of mental health and psychological safety in teams. * Why Extreme Programming is harder (and better) than Scrum. * The impact of lean principles on software development and tackling waste. * The influence of cultural differences on communication and leadership.

    41 min

  4. FEB 26

    20. Margaret Le on technical leadership and building strong engineering cultures

    Join us as we welcome Margaret Le, VP of Engineering at Facet, to discuss her experience from software engineering leadership roles at New Relic, Heroku, Slack, and Facet. We dive deep into the engineering leader's role in technical direction, and building teams and culture. Margaret shares her insights on defining and executing technical vision. She also explains how to cultivate a thriving work environment by clearly defining core values. She talks about the value of psychological safety, transparency, and vulnerability.

    26 min

  5. JAN 29

    19. Jade Rubick: using task forces to solve complex leadership challenges

    In this episode, we delve into the concept of task forces and their crucial role in addressing organizational challenges. Discover when and how to employ task forces effectively, and learn from real-life examples, including a case at New Relic to rapidly deliver a complex feature in six weeks, and another involving a complex merger that spanned every department. I share actionable tips on how to set up a successful task force, including the importance of a solid kickoff meeting, selecting the right team members, and how to leverage the power of other leaders.

    13 min

  6. JAN 15

    18. Brent Miller on team self-selection and project Upscale

    Upscale was a large scale agile transformation at a 50 team software company. Brent and I were on the leadership team. The aim of Upscale was to address the gridlock problem with cross-team projects. Jade brought in James Shore, author of The Art of Agile Development, and he led us through a massive amount of change. Upscale was extremely successful, but there were missteps and challenges. We retrospect on Upscale, and talk through cross-team dependencies, and especially into the massive self-selection event, where most of the people in engineering got to choose which team they wanted to be a part of. The episode covers a lot of topics in organizational design, team autonomy, and change management.

    1h 8m

  7. 12/04/2024

    17. Katie Wilde on the challenging step to director, and the perverse incentives of reliability

    Katie Wilde is an accomplished leader from Snyk, Ambassador Labs, and Buffer. She shares how she learned to be an effective director (and how challenging the transition was), and shares tons of insights into why it's hard to build a culture of reliability in engineering organizations. And she shares a bunch of wonderful approaches to make reliability fun and desirable. This episode was a delight, and I learned a bunch from it.

    40 min

  8. 11/06/2024

    16. Jade Rubick on Tiny Thursdays

    We often don't prioritize the tiny things that make exceptional products. I share a practice we adopted recently that helps us ship lots of little things every Thursday.

    12 min
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    Ratings & Reviews

    5
    out of 5
    5 Ratings

    About

    Decoding Leadership - where we break down the intersection of effective and humane leadership, especially in software product development (engineering, product, and design).

    Information

    • Creator
      Jade Rubick
    • Years Active
      2024 - 2025
    • Episodes
      23
    • Rating
      Explicit
    • Copyright
      © Jade Rubick
    • Show Website
      Decoding Leadership

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