Disappointing but not surprising. 

It has been some time since I wrote in my blog. It was time to come back. 

‍P.S. This is not A.I.; this is me on a Sunday with a beer on hand after finishing a construction delivery project design for my family. Anyway, let's dive in.

I thought about how I could make this post exciting and creative; hence, I decided that a way to emphasize the significance of writing down the strategy, bringing people together, and sharing goals for decision-making would be through a "deja vu" comparison of the movie "Oppenheimer" and the power concept of an organization when "buying pizza" and getting everyone in the same room. 

Oppenheimer, a biographical drama film, chronicles the life and career of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who led the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during World War II. 

In my previous post, I talked about the importance of an organization strategy (Responsible = CEO); nevertheless, let's put the business, product, or design strategy aside for this post. I will focus on the engineering side, and the first crucial takeaway from this post is that you can solve half the engineering strategy crisis by just writing stuff down. 

Oppenheimer (the movie) and the deja vu.

Oppenheimer's movie is a masterpiece from any angle you criticize; his director, Christopher Nolan, has been referenced as a genius. The film soundtrack and screen composition are all quite a remarkable piece of art by a young Swedish composer, Ludwig Göransson. That sound world of tension, dread, and anticipation invites you to stop, think, and analyze the story. 

The Manhattan Project was an American-led effort to develop a functional atomic weapon during World War II. While an organization's strategy might not be about developing weapons, the story has quite a few scenes in the storytelling techniques that leaders with attention to detail could grab on.

Scene

Lieutenant General Leslie Groves (who, by the way, oversaw the Pentagon's construction) attempts to recruit Oppenheimer. 
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Oppenheimer, located in his lifelong love of New Mexico at the school he used to teach, was ready. Oppenheimer pulls a chalkboard and explains in detail why/how and what, and at the end of the scene, he says: "We won't get the best of scientists if we don't bring their families with us."

Deja vu

This act highlights the importance of leadership that effectively communicates the "why" behind decisions, creating a shared understanding, circle of trust, and purpose. Critics might argue that too much transparency can lead to information overload and hinder decision-making processes, especially in larger organizations. - To me, this is false.

While I agree that not all information within an organization can or should be made transparent, sensitive matters, such as personnel issues or specific financial data, may not be suitable for open discussion. This is where the experience and leadership of a C-Suite team come into place. The C-Suite leadership can balance transparency and discretion in handling sensitive financial matters. 

"Have you ever thought about how something as simple as buying pizza can be a key to effective organizational decision-making?"

I bet you can identify several times when you've had this experience: 

A senior leader joins the organization, and you notice them steer the organization towards a total architectural rewrite from services to adopting new tools and/or programming language. Regardless of the proposed technical change, it's almost always coupled with the promise of fixing a broad swath of organizational and technical challenges.

"Just use [insert the latest technology here], aim it at the exhaust port, and all your problems will be solved."

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These overly simplified approaches to complex organizational problems end up far more costly than anticipated, have a high failure rate, and typically don't address the underlying issues. I have found and experienced that the most effective way to strike a balance is to have a clearly articulated technology investment thesis.

I would love to see more organizations writing these sorts of investment theses and sharing them externally; I think they're precious insight into how companies work.

Standardizing technology is a powerful way to create leverage: improve tooling, and every engineer will be more productive. The core of engineering strategy is the tradeoffs and timing between standardizing what works, exploring for superior technology, and supporting the adoption of superior technology.

A good engineering strategy has an essential logical structure.

The strategy contains three elements and two main components. 

Elements:

• A diagnosis
• A guiding policy
• A coherent action.
  

Components: 

• Honest diagnosis
• Practical approach.

Honest diagnosis: the reality of your organization.

Example: "We're willing to invest heavily in migrating to services. This means slowing down product velocity in the short and mid-term."

A practical approach makes explicit tradeoffs that acknowledge your real constraints.

Example: "We don't adopt additional programming languages, even if we prefer them, because we don't have the capacity to support them."

Straightforward problems require straightforward solutions. 

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I've found what works in practice so far: Primarily, standardized explorations should drive order of magnitude improvement and limit concurrent explorations.

Standardization‍

Focus on a handful of technologies and adapt your approaches to fit within those technologies' capabilities and constraints.

Exploration

The fundamental value of exploration is that your current tools have brought you close to where your business is, but you're very far from where you might want to be. Even if you're near to your goals today, it'll keep moving over time, and trending towards it requires ongoing investment.

Each successful exploration slightly accelerates your overall productivity. The first doesn't change things too much, and neither does the second, but as you continue to complete explorations successfully, their technical leverage begins to compound, slowly, subtly becoming more powerful.

Reflecting on my experience with technological change, I believe that introducing one additional constraint into the "continuous improvement" is to limit the number of ongoing explorations that can occur at any given time.

In an organization, selling a lot does not guarantee business. An extensive roadmap of products does not ensure success. Global organizations face the challenge of collaboration, communication, and transparency, or what a few would call operational excellence.

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It is not about doing a lot of things; it is about doing simple things extraordinary things well. 

Some leaders want to avoid having more problems, but I wish I had more skills. I work daily on different areas to obtain new ones and improve on others. 

Creating, building, and designing a boom is not nearly as comparable to what it takes to lead an organization or a group of people; however, some of us are in positions where we can affect other people's lives, which matters. People are what makes business possible.

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