This document discusses personal development and team composition for innovation and growth. It presents ideas from "The Leadership Pipeline" book on how to develop individual careers and build effective teams. The document outlines 7 levels of leadership from individual contributor to enterprise management. For each level, it discusses key behaviors that must be mastered to advance to the next level, including skills like communication, organizing others, mentoring, and strategic thinking. It provides guidance on using the leadership pipeline model to understand one's current leadership level and skills needed to progress to higher levels.

1. Scott Francis
Robert Half
DeveloperWeek – San Francisco
February 10, 2014
Personal Development & Team Composition
for Innovation & Growth

2. PROMISE FOR THIS SESSION
By spending your time in this session, you will learn about
how to develop your own career, build an effective and
stable team, and deliver top results for many years
through an understanding of leadership.

3. PRINCIPLES
In this talk, I will present ideas from The Leadership
Pipeline, peppered with my own experience and other
anecdotes, in a structured format leading from individual
contributor to CEO or CTO.

4. TACTICS
At each level, I will discuss the key behaviors that must
be mastered followed by the changes needed to make it
to the next level.

5. PULL
• Great for software development
• Lousy for teams
• Why
• Lead time to find personnel
• Time for productivity of those personnel (business context)

6. PIPELINE | SKILL BEFORE NEED
If it’s hard to get the people we need, then we need to develop our own
Skill acquisition is straightforward, what is often overlooked is leadership
• Doesn’t just mean managing people
• Anyone with an idea who motivates other is a leader
Leadership is a skill that can be developed, but the resources are more limited
• For a long-lived enterprise, need a practice to develop those leaders
• For the short-lived effort, need a model to understand how to build a team
The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company, Charan, Drotter, Noel
http://www.amazon.com/The-Leadership-Pipeline-Powered-Company/dp/0470894563

7. CLIMBING THE LADDER
7 LEVELS
0 | Managing Self
1 | Managing Others
2 | Managing Managers
3 | Functional Management
4 | Business Management
5 | Group Management
6 | Enterprise Management
TECHNICAL LEVELS
Level 0 | Individual Contributor
Level 1 | Tech/Project Lead/Architect
Level 2 | Multi-Project Architect/Tech Lead
Level 3 | Tech Lead for Product Line/Business Tier
Level 4 | Lead/Architecture All Business Components
Level 5 | Multi-line business tech lead/architecture
Level 6 | Enterprise Architecture/Tech Strategy
6 KEY TRANSITIONS

8. LEVEL 0  1 | SELF  OTHERS
Key Behavior: Getting work done through others
Skills
• Communications
• Set short & long term goals
• Conflict resolution
• Delegation
TECHNICAL
Key: Stop being super-coder and start organizing others
Skills
• Decomposing User Stories into Tasks
• Prioritize and Prune Efforts in alignment with business
• Surface issues early

9. 0  1 | SKILLS
COMMUNICATIONS
Understand your own style, world-view, and preferences
• Others may have different styles, views…
• Can you anticipate them?
• How can you make your point clear?
• Be Proactive and think about who needs what
information
• Having difficult conversations
ORGANIZING OTHERS
Designing Tasks and Decomposing Work will become one of
your most valuable skills for the rest of your career
• Definition of Done
• Define Tasks that suit skills/capabilities
• Learning to say ‘No’ and other unpopular actions
• Discover Problems | Provide Solutions
Take time to learn your own style – understand yourself

10. LEVEL 1  2 | MULTIPLE PROJECTS, INDIRECT
Key Behavior: Coaching Others to Lead
Skills
• Mentoring
• Training and Selecting
• Culture Keeping
• Team Building
• Shift from Tactical to Strategic Thinking
TECHNICAL
Key: be Responsible FOR/not Responsible for DOING
Skills
• Hiring and On-Boarding New Engineers
• Maintaining Consistency of Stack
• Anticipate Problems
• Future Skills & Technologies
• Synergy of Skills and Seniority

11. 1  2 | BEHAVIORS
CULTURE KEEPER
“It’s how we do things around here”
• Don’t be afraid to prune
MAKING TEAMS WORK & WORK WELL!
• Well Rounded Group of Lopsided Individuals
BOXING TIME
• Block time to think about personal interactions
• Your own, within the team, your peers
• To research industry, trends, competitors, tech
ASKING FOR HELP
• Lowest Intensity engagement
• Not interrogating
• Recognize (and Trust) that team may know more than you
• And that’s okay!
DELEGATION
• Critical now
• Trust or Replace

12. IMPORTANCE OF TEAM COMPOSITION
Self Leadership and Self-Directing Teams need
• Agreement and Commitment to the goal
• Mutual Trust & Respect
• Complementary Skills, Attitudes, Backgrounds
• Mix of Seniority
• Build the Pipeline
TOOLS
• PITI, MBTI, …
• 360 feedback
• Leadership Pipeline!
• Skills Matrix
demo.traitify.com

13. LEVEL 2  3 | LEADING THE FUNCTION
Key Behavior: Thinking & Leading Strategically
Skills
• Awareness/Presence beyond Enterprise
• Mapping Industry Trends to Business Advantage
• Initiating Projects to Leverage New Trends as
appropriate for business
• Deep Listening
TECHNICAL
Key: Thinking beyond current product, but be eager to listen to
concerns of contributors without bias to detect trends early
Skills
• Trade off tactical benefits for Strategic gains
• developing staff for future needs
• Trace and predict impact to business of tech trends

14. 2  3 | THE FUNCTION
Not just making effective product, but building an
effective department, architecture, structure that the
business can use for competitive advantage
• What makes an effective group? Structure? API?
• Will the asset be effective in 9 mos? 18? 36?
• What changes need to happen?
• Tech  Skills
• Capabilities  Structure
ADD VALUE
• Be Wary of “Infrastructure” projects or “rewrites”
• Often covering up bias or incomplete understanding
Instead
• Look to make structure “intentional, but emergent”
• Deliver in components of improvement attached to user value

15. ANATOMY OF A STRATEGY
PROMISE
Start with a plain, clear statement of
the benefit of the effort
By doing <project>, we commit to
delivering <value> to <stakeholder>
Optional decorations:
• Alternatives
• Specifics of value or methods
TACTICS
What will you try to deliver the promise?
• NOT commitments
• Ideas, considerations, approaches
Reuse the payment processor
Create new API and host Hackathon to
drive usage
PRINCIPLES
What tenets will you never violate?
• Compromise security
• Sell user data
What must be included for the strategy to
be a success?
• Make use of the XYZ purchase
• Maximize use of current staff
fruITion, Chris Potts | http://www.amazon.com/fruITion-Creating-Corporate-Information-Technology-ebook/dp/B004I6E8GE

16. LEVEL 3  4 | LEADING BEYOND YOUR SPECIALTY
Key Behavior: Understand Core Business Process outside
functional experience area
Skills
• Time Management
• Focus on what is/will be important, not what's easy or
comfortable
• Understanding how functions, projects, and efforts
contribute to business KPIs in short and long term
• business model | how is money transformed
• justify and forecast use of funds
TECHNICAL
Key: Learn New Functions and the Value they bring
Skills
• Forget what you know/Study unfamiliar functions
• Be able to map use of funds to KPIs
• Add Back Tactical Focus

17. LEVEL 4  5 | ALLOCATING AMONG LOTS OF THINGS
Key Behavior: coordinating multiple models for greater
overall performance beyond the sum of parts
Skills
• Ability to understand new business models quickly
• Allocate funds to both babies and bath water
TECHNICAL
Key: Assess Relative Merits of Different Systems, Technologies
Skills
• Capabilities Assessment
• Evaluate Integration Points
• Recognize Adoption Curves and Where Projects are along
those curves

18. NIH | BUILD OR BUY
Early in the Pipeline Bias to Build and Confidence in Solution
is Critical to Success
• If you don’t believe, who will?
But, farther along, the bias must be consciously eschewed in
favor of analysis in terms of best way to deliver
• Core promise of Strategy
• Alignment to Competency
FEDERATE
Why not build AND buy?
• Innovate on TOP of purchased solution
Consider Vendor Perspective
• Feeding the vendor may make a better solution | continuous
improvement, benefit from multiple clients
• Possible to Leapfrog competitors using the vendor

19. LEVEL 5  6 | CONSIDERING THE ENTIRE PICTURE
Key Behavior: considering multiple viewpoints—most of
them external, but directing internally
Skills
• Quick, accurate decisions
• Summarize & Digest information quickly
• Confident and committed to principles
TECHNICAL
Key: Understand and Map Value to Customers, other
Stakeholders of Technical Assets and Direction
Skills
• Quickly understand integration potential of new assets
• Due Diligence Activities

20. KEYS TO UNDERSTANDING THE DEVELOPMENT LADDER
It’s not a ladder
• Zig-Zag path – like a tacking sailboat
At each turn or ‘tack’
• It will look and feel like you are going the other direction
• Because you are
May be ‘tops’ before the turn, but ‘bottoms’ after
You can’t skip steps
• Lookout for people who have!
Progress is made tack over tack – not directly

21. MAKING THE TURN
READINESS
Is someone showing
• Mastery of the current level skills
• Functioning at a high degree of competence
• Showing some ability in the next level skills
AFTER THE TURN
Expect a drop in relative competence
• Focus/coaching on the new skills
• Even to elimination or delegation of old ones
CAUTION: Watch out for ‘promotions’ that require two
levels of competence – doesn’t leave room for the growth
necessary for the new level.

22. USING THE PIPELINE
CURRENT STATE
• Understand who, where YOU are
• How do others perceive and process?
• What levels, skills, or other traits are missing from
your team?
FUTURE STATE
Understand what’s NEXT
• Can’t skip levels
• Demonstrate High Level of Competence at Current Level
• Develop/TRY skills for NEXT Level
CAUTION: Watch out for ‘promotions’ that require two
levels of competence – doesn’t leave room for the growth
necessary for the new level.