Business value
Our employer hired us to bring business value to the company, let's make sure we deliver.
Hi, this is Peter with the next edition of the Professional Manager newsletter. I publish this newsletter to illustrate what decent, seasoned, professional engineering management could look like.
This is the first of a two-part series about the importance of focusing on business value. This edition will explore why relentlessly pursuing business value is critical for any engineering team. We will walk through what could go wrong when the team loses sight of why a company employs us. In an upcoming edition, we will explore ways to help a team who lost sight of their purpose within the business.
Why are we here?
It is the engineering leader’s job to keep the team focused on the right goals
Navigating the intersection of representing the business’ best interest, advocating for great engineering, and keeping engineers engaged, motivated, and happy can be challenging for engineering managers (EM).
Throughout my career, I always kept in mind that I worked for a for-profit business and that delivering value for my employer was my job. I am proud to say that I always pursued business value without jeopardizing my engineering spine or my team’s trust and belief in me.
This post highlights the importance of the engineering team adding business value. It is also essential to note that innovation should not suffer in a first-class technology business. Maintaining and strengthening an EM’s engineering spine is crucial to the success of any engineering team.
Regardless of your seniority level, your boss always looks at you to deliver business value - that is, if your boss is a professional manager! At the start of their careers, EMs must deliver maximum business value via their team. Senior managers and directors need to do so while collaborating with several other vertical teams. CTOs trust VPs of Engineering with all of engineering. CTOs are trusted to own the entire tech organization.
What is business value?
When I speak about business value, I mean concretely influencing a company’s bottom line. For the sake of examples, business value could manifest as
Increasing monthly active users
Helping the company sell more of whatever they’re selling
Running experiments to learn about the customer
Improving conversion
Decreasing the company’s operating expenses
I do not know what your engineering team is after. I am just suggesting they need to pursue something tangible to the business.
Good engineers want to contribute to the business
Most engineers I have worked with were interested in moving the business forward. Good engineers want to make a mark on a company. It is usually a failure in leadership when a team loses sight of why the company employs them.
Culture Shift
Sometimes, engineering teams lose sight of the fact that they are employed to realize business value through the power of technology. Some of the biggest and most rewarding challenges in my career were when I needed to shift the culture of an engineering organization to be more focused on delivering business value.
“Brilliant” engine, “obstinate” customers
Many years ago, the CTO asked me to lead a flailing org where the leadership before me allowed the teams to exclusively focus on interesting technical challenges without regard for what matters to any business - money and users. They built a convoluted, custom Rube Goldberg Machine of a rules engine far from any “industry standard.” Therefore our customers could not easily understand nor adopt our bespoke engine and API. All of our key metrics were going in the wrong direction. Customers were asking for more features, adoption was lagging, and revenue was declining. Despite these critical metrics suffering for over a year, the team insisted on staying the course.
The individuals in the org I was now in charge of were decent engineers and employees. Most people on the team were competent and dedicated. It was just that they gravitated toward intellectual stimuli vs. keeping the business’ best interest in mind. When they saw all KPIs going the wrong way, they kept their heads in the sand and promoted the brilliance of the system they created.
The company had a “come to Jesus” leadership meeting when I took over the team. We were going to think through what was not working with this “brilliant” engine the team created. I knew my work was cut out for me when the principal architect compared the engine to the iPhone and told us that our obstinate customers were just not understanding the value!
All business metrics are going in the wrong direction. The team is blaming the customer. The principal architect and the rest of the leaders think they invented the iPhone of software. You’ve got a Rube Goldberg machine on your hands. The competition caught up, and it is your job to turn this ship around. Welcome to the team, Peter!
Social Club Inc
Social Club Inc was a well-funded startup. The CEO was incredibly supportive of building a first-class engineering team. We had the illusion of infinite money. Under these circumstances, it was easy to lose sight of the fact that this was still a for-profit business. When I joined, I noticed that
EM’s rated most all engineers as great performers or better.
Nobody was willing to have hard conversations about unsuccessful products in the market.
EMs prided themselves in being “people managers,” and they gave no thought to sound engineering or business value. EMs had no technical curiosity and needed individual contributors to support them in nearly all meetings.
EM candidates the company was interviewing were not interested in technology. Had we hired them, we would’ve perpetuated our wrong path.
When I asked about 1:1’s and retros, I found out that EM’s used all the time to “catch up” with their team members. They did not consider intentional career development, continuous improvement, or innovation.
When I wrote up my 60-day org evaluation to my boss, I noted that I felt we had far too casual of culture at Social Club Inc.
The individual contributors in this engineering org were stellar. It was not their fault that their managers were unable to realize business value!
Engineering leaders cannot articulate what their teams are after. When I provide constructive feedback, leaders reporting to me take that as an indictment of our working relationship. We are working on products that are not selling. We are perpetuating this casual atmosphere by hiring underqualified leaders. Not a recipe for success. Enjoy fixing this, Peter!
Summary
This edition covered the importance of engineering leaders keeping business value in mind when they lead. Left unaccountable to meaningful business KPIs, engineering teams may flounder under a culture of pursuing “cool” projects. It is up to EMs to work with leaders across the company to specifically tie engineering work to company outcomes and align the team to execute against those metrics. A team who takes its eyes off the prize will experience a culture that is not conducive to building a successful business. In upcoming editions, we will cover how I turned around cultures.