To Nha Notes | Dec. 30, 2022, 11:22 a.m.
Silicon Valley has well-known mantras about “failing fast and iterating.” That philosophy doesn’t just apply to engineering design, but to human learning as well.
Before you carry out the task, be mindful and stop yourself. Ask this critical question: Am I really the only one who can do this work?
When you get to work each day, ask yourself a different critical question: What can I do that nobody else on my team can do?
You can protect your teams from organizational politics; you can give them encouragement; you can make sure everyone is treating one another well, creating a culture of humility, trust, and respect.
But often the most common and important answer to this question is: “I can see the forest through the trees.” In other words, you can define a high-level strategy. Your strategy needs to cover not just overall technical direction, but an organizational strategy as well. You’re building a blueprint for how the ambiguous problem is solved and how your organization can manage the problem over time. You’re continuously mapping out the forest, and then assigning the tree-cutting to others.
The ebook Software Engineering at Google