Author: Andrea Grassi

When we lead we’re often tempted to shortcut.
To give a quick solution to a problem or to guide people towards what we think is best.
If we have an higher rank we might fall into the trap of thinking we have the right to interrupt and speak, or to move the conversation of a meeting towards a different topic.

But what these actions truly achieve is to lower the power of the team.

Why? Because you (the leader, or the highest in rank) are the example.
If you get distracted, you allow everyone to do so.
If you don’t make space for other’s opinions, people will shut op or even worse, they’ll talk over others.

If you won’t respect the time people are putting into this conversation, the others will do the same.
If you don’t trust, you won’t create trust.
If you don’t let them free to experiment, you won’t get experiments.

If you will be superficial you won’t see people going deeper into a problem or a topic.

To get the maximum out of the team you need to be your personal best example.
If you show a mediocre example, you’ll get a mediocre result.

It’s when we face the unknown that we grow.

It’s when we are not perfectly suited for the job, that we have a chance to add skills and improve them to survive the context.

When you have constraints you can’t remove or skills you didn’t refine enough, then you can grow, because you’re filling the invisible gap that lets you learn how to move differently, how to think differently.

It’s like when you first learn a new topic. The gap is enormous, but step by step you start to fill it, to understand it.

If you were already good at it you wouldn’t learn or (worse) if you -think- you’re good (but you’re not) then you won’t learn.

But in all the other situations you’ll be learning, moving forward and doing more.

Recently I had to make a software selection based on many technical aspects of each product.

This was a cross-functional team initiative, so each team would need enough ownership to dive into the product and assess whether or not the feature was complete, sufficient, etc.

So I decided to prepare both a document with all the features to check for each team and a spreadsheet with a list of them to easily compare the products between themselves.
On each row I added two columns. “Is it feasible?” “Notes/Extra details”.

During brainstorming we thought about also adding a value number, like 1 to 5, to have an instant idea of how good/complete it was.

When I started evaluating such column I immediately thought: “How can a number express the complexity of a feature of product?”
Yes, if the feature is simple it might be ok, but we’re talking about SEO, API integrations, extensibility option, design options, etc.

They’re complex things.
Also, for each topic we had many different aspects to evaluate.
The fact that one topic had more things to check didn’t mean they had all the same value.
Some are more important, some are less important.
Some might be intentionally overlooked while others differently considered depending on the context.

A number would make it easier to make a choice in the end.
But it wouldn’t necessarily help us make a better choice.

This is an easy post to make, maybe even too much conventional.

I’ve been always a fan of focusing, of having some dedicate time. As a developer first and foremost, this was something I craved.

Uninterrupted time can do wonders in letting you dive into a direction or topic.
So why even bother writing for something that’s already well known?

Well, for one I lost focus in the last year.
Not because of me, but because of the staggering amount of meetings I had each day. Hours of meetings with no space in between and no way to dedicate more than half an hour to a more complex thought.

To be honest, I started thinking it was my problem.
Until yesterday. An entire day of uninterrupted time.

I had to get used to it again, diving deeper into a topic, digging all the options, lying out a complex plan.
It was amazing.
Which reminded again the value of focusing and uninterrupted time.

The more we have of it, the more we’ll create out of it.

One thing though that didn’t work for mewas blocking half a day for working.
It’s probably because of mental space. I still read emails, I still think about what I’ll need to do or prepare for the next day and so on.

Instead of focusing on important task, I faced (because obviously I wanted to be ready for each call) on the ones I’d need first.
But that robbed me of mental space. Which is why focusing was hard.

Many people will tell you “block some hours a day” and my response now is: “It -might- work”.
It might work because it depends on the job. If I was more a dev and less of a manager, yeah. A laid out list of task is enough to keep you busy and relax you in that timeframe.

But if you need to enrich the vision, create a plan, document complex topics and prepare things for the rest of the day, it might not work as planned.
It’s the “uninterrupted” (internally and externally) time that truly works.
That is what we need to achieve.

It’s hard to truly know your value.
If you’re humble you’ll underestimate and miss the clues around you, the messages from the people. If you’re overconfident you might overestimate and miss the feedback.

Or you might do the opposite. Knowing your value is a hard task because, often, the value depends on the context.
Your range of experience and knowledge might give an incredible amount of value in a specific field, while being useless in others.

When you look around for ideas, companies, friends, it’s hard to know how much alignment there is between your skills and their needs. There is no easy path to discover it, you must always try.

But there are also times when you have clues around you that tell your value. People reminding of the amazing work you do each and every day. People that respect you and admire you.
And if they’re honest and you don’t feel too much overconfident you might as well shut up that voice in your head for a second, to be grateful for such an amazing group of people that cheers for you.