Tech Leadership Newsletter - Issue #47
Enjoy our best technology leadership findings for the month.
Hello,
The Tech Leadership newsletter is released monthly by the Tech Leadership team. The content is curated and ideal for longtime, new, and aspiring technology leaders. Our mission is to help each other learn through sharing of ideas.
Enjoy our best technology leadership findings for the month.
You're doing quarterly planning wrong
Engineers often dread the end of the quarter because it means one thing: quarterly planning. This can mean weeks of prep and tedious meetings, all of which distract from the actual work of shipping a product. With 26 small teams (and counting), we end up running quarterly planning a lot. We’ve had many opportunities to make mistakes and learn from them. We're sharing these lessons here, so you can learn faster than we did.
New advice for aspiring managers
I had a conversation with a colleague the other week who is interested in moving into management. It was during this conversation that I realized just how different my advice is now compared to even a few years ago, so I thought it would be worth writing down and sharing more broadly.
Prioritisation - Through The Looking Glass
It really bothers me when I hear leaders talk about their "top priorities" in the plural. The contradiction is plain to see. Teams already juggling competing demands don't respond well to being told that everything is the top priority; it causes confusion and risks burnout. A lack of proper prioritisation is more than messy language; it's a sign of deeper organisational dysfunction. In practice, multiple priorities can make sense when framed with clarity, perspective, and an understanding of the trade-offs.
Modeling Imperfection
Early on our leadership journeys, many of us think that leadership is about being the toughest, smartest, most knowledgeable, etc. As we advance on that journey, we might begin to realize that if we are the smartest, most knowledgeable person in the room, we’re in the wrong room. We almost always have people on our teams who know more and can do more than us. However, most of us never realize that being willing to admit that we don’t have all the answers is only the first step in demonstrating great leadership through being vulnerable.
Managing a Former Peer
There’s nothing lonelier than a promotion no one claps for. Not failure. People at least rally around that. They buy you coffee. Slack you sad emojis. But when you move up? When you’re the one who got picked? No one knows where to stand. Especially your old peers. Especially the ones who didn’t get picked. Some pretend nothing’s changed. Others go quiet, waiting to see how you’ll change first. And maybe the worst part is, they’re not wrong to wonder.
Thank you to our sponsors
Peach Payments make online commerce and digital payment acceptance easier and more accessible across Africa.
We believe in the potential of Africa and aim to grow into more countries.
Based in Cape Town, South Africa, we work with small and large merchants in South Africa, Kenya and Mauritius to provide a complete toolkit to accept, manage and disburse payments through web and mobile.
Our merchant partners include your favorite food delivery services, whether you are ordering in or using a meal kit, travel services that can help you book your next getaway adventure and even your neighbor’s side-hustle e-commerce store. For these partners and their customers, we aim to provide brilliant experiences that make it as easy as possible to facilitate online payments.
MoonPay believes in building a world where you own your digital future, giving you control of your identity, money, property and data.
We are the market leader in end-to-end solutions simplifying access to the crypto economy for 20M+ people across 180+ countries, and trusted by iconic global brands including wallets, marketplaces, exchanges and leading web2 enterprises.
OfferZen is an online job marketplace by developers for developers.
Our mission is to help people unlock their potential by helping them build awesome software.That's why we are connecting actively looking developers with exciting job opportunities from over 1000 companies in South Africa and the Netherlands.
We flip the normal recruitment process on its head – companies reach out to candidates with upfront salary information.