The colours of Tech Leadership

Finding a good way to do Tech Leadership is tough. When dumbing down the problem for people I often refer the Insights Discovery colours (but with my own interpretation):

• The colour green stands for people leadership i.e. building a great team, enable them, mentor & coach them etc. etc.
• The colour yellow stands for inspiration. This involves making clear what the inspirational purpose of the team is. An inspired team will pull the work rather than waiting for work to be pushed their way.
• The colour red stands for product/business leadership. Each iteration we do, we need to be clear on what problem are we trying to solve to best help our customers succeed.
• The colour blue is where the technology comes in; building & maintaining a solid foundation, securing & protecting standards, keeping tech debt at bay etc.

Teams work well when all colours are well represented. When it comes to leadership the same applies. We'd love to think that leaders are are strong in all areas, but in my experience, leaders are often most comfortable in 2 of these colours. This means that our tech leader needs help and different frameworks offer different solutions. Scrum offers roles like the product owner and scrum masters. Spotify introduced matrix structures with chapter leads & tribe leads. We also often see leadership roles that focus on technology (Tech lead, Principal), leaving people management with others.

Now all of these can work well, depending on the people fulfilling the roles. In my experience, Engineering managers who excel in tech & people leadership in combination with product owners with a clear vision (yellow) and thorough understanding of the business (red) works really well.

But as mentioned you will rarely find that combination and you face issues like this:

• Tech leaders don\'t really like to be involved in people leadership (e.g. managing under performance). (lack of green)
• People or business oriented leaders miss technical expertise. Apart from the risk of technical debt, this means that engineers might feel their manager does not really understand them enough to judge their performance and/or can help them grow. (lack of blue).
• The people with business/product understanding don't have enough time or patience to work with the team. This means that we might miss opportunities for (alternate/better) solutions. (lack of red)
• Product owners are often more analytical or might even have a tech background. When this happens, there is often not enough focus on the why/true purpose (lack of yellow).

To solve the above problems, you have to restore one of more colours. Assuming you have the right people on the bus, you have to truly understand people's colour preferences, skills as well as personal ambitions right now and in the future. You also have to find the right balance between sticking to a static/symmetrical organisational structure and keep things more fluid.

No magic solution in this post (as there isn't one), but the colours are a good place to start. Connect with me if you want to discuss.