The Tech Executive Operating System: Creating an R&D Organization That Moves the Needle

Contents\nAbout the Author\nAcknowledgments\nIntroduction\nChapter 1: What Does the Company Need You For?\n	What Is a Tech Executive, Anyway?\n	The Effective Tech Executive\n	The Good, the Bad, and the Great\n		The Momentum Detractors\n		The Glorified Managers\n		Those Who Get It\n	Tech Executives: A Balanced Scale\n	The LEAP Responsibilities\n		Leadership\n		Evangelism: Outward-Facing Tech Delivery\n		Architecture: Tech Guidance and Innovation\n		People: Managing Execution\n	What Would You Say You Do Here?\n		Considering Your Role\n		Axioms of Effective Leadership\n			Executive Leadership Is Long Term\n			Technology as Innovative Asset\n			Coders Without Borders\n			Great Teams Are Made of Layers of Force Multipliers\n	Naming Things Is Hard\n	Your Personal Upgrade\nChapter 2: Executive Product Mastery\n	Product Mastery at the Executive Level\n	How Will You Be Measured?\n		A Successful Project\n		The CEO Meeting\n	Grokking the Business\n		The Company’s Gestalt\n			Values, Vision, Mission\n			Business Model and Health\n			History\n		Why, Who, and How?\n			The Problem\n			The Customers\n				The Market\n				Users vs. Buyers\n			The Solution\n				Product Walk-Through\n				Competition\n				Current Approach\n				Research Your Pipeline\n				Shadowing Customer Success\n		Quick Self-Assessment\n		Maintaining Your Product Mastery\n	Your Personal Upgrade\nChapter 3: First 100 Days\n	What’s Special About the First 100 Days?\n		Setting Expectations\n		The Window of Malleability\n		Your Goals\n	You, Juggler\n		Initial Overwhelm\n		Don’t Rush into Things\n		Triage\n			Write It Down\n			Decide on Next Steps\n			Follow Up\n			Putting Fires Out\n	Making Changes\n		Get to the Root Cause\n			Socratic Questioning\n			Collecting Evidence\n		Changes as Tests\n	Pulling Up Your Sleeves\n		Building Rapport\n		One-on-Ones with Your Directs\n		One-on-Ones with Peers\n		Shadow Meetings\n		Learn the Projects\n		The Rest of Your Organization\n	Fog of War\n		Hiring and Firing Decisions\n		Are Projects on Track?\n		Team’s Health\n			Velocity\n			Architectural Soundness\n			Quality Issues\n			Maturity of Processes\n			Regulation and Compliance\n			Hiring and Turnover\n			Reputation\n			Innovation\n	Forming a Plan\n	Your Personal Upgrade\nChapter 4: Moving Upstream\n	With Great Responsibility Comes Great Power\n		Your Location down the Decision Stream\n	Manifestations of Leadership\n		Forming Strategy\n		Compiling Roadmaps\n		Cultivating Culture\n		Short-Circuiting Silo Thinking\n		Leading Risk Management\n		Motivating\n	Claiming Your Seat Around the Table\n		Own It and Say So\n		Get to the Meetings\n		Speak Up\n		Speak Business\n		Get Allies\n		Don’t Accept Tasks\n		Get a Coach\n	Your Personal Upgrade\nChapter 5: Your Executive Toolset\n	Tailoring Your Approach\n		Executive Mindset\n		Don’t Shy Away\n		Letting Go\n		Take the Lead\n	Tactics\n		Controlling Your Time\n			Time to Lead\n			Leadership Blocks\n			The Calendar Reset\n			Getting Assistance\n			A Typical Week\n		Managing Your Manager\n			Results\n			Business Talk\n			Don’t Go Incommunicado\n			Speak Your Mind\n		Enabling Autonomy\n			Default Responses\n			Guidelines\n			Delegation\n				“They Can’t Do This Yet”\n			Coaching vs. Mentoring\n		Management by Wandering Around\n			Remote MBWA\n			An Open-Door Policy That Works\n		High-Quality Meetings\n			Have an Agenda\n			Be Prepared\n			Be On Time\n			Meetings Should Have Results\n			The Meeting Is the Work\n			Meeting Culture Is Your Culture\n	Your Personal Upgrade\nChapter 6: Impact\n	What Does Impact Mean for R&D?\n	Creating Focus\n	Measuring Impact\n		Measuring Impact of Teams\n		Measuring Impact of Individuals\n		Measuring Impact of Managers\n	Organizational Structure for Impact\n		What’s a Cross-Functional Team?\n	How Will You Know You Had Impact?\n	Your Personal Upgrade\nChapter 7: Driving Change\n	Change Is a Must\n		Change Culture: No Status Quo Allowed\n		Pitfall: Don’t Create Change Fatigue\n	Algorithm for Changes\n		Defining and Choosing the Initiatives\n		Bite-Sizing for Momentum\n		Introducing the Plan\n		Initiation\n		Execute\n			Track\n			Celebrate Often\n			Learn from Setbacks\n		Summarize and Learn\n			Celebrate\n			Improve\n			Clean Your Plate\n	Speed of Change\n		Stale Velocity\n		Arbitrary Deadlines\n		Improving How You Are Improving\n	Pushing for Change\n		No One Wants to Be a Pushover\n		Preliminary Legwork\n			Appealing to Their Self-Interest\n			Hearing Objections Beforehand\n			Creating a Shared Vision\n		Pitfall: Avoid the Consensus Trap\n	Your Personal Upgrade\nChapter 8: R&D as the Innovation Center\n	Cost Center?\n	The Innovation Vision\n	Types of Innovation\n		Product Novelty\n		Technological Edge\n		Tech Capital\n		Process Ingenuity\n		Which Fits Your Needs?\n	Implementing Innovation\n		Get Some Wiggle Room\n		Make It a Part of the Job\n			Non-feature Work\n			Intermissions\n			What Do You Do on Intermissions?\n			Kicking Off Intermissions\n		Account for Innovation\n		Failing Spectacularly\n		Hackathons are a Hack\n	Making Smart People Think\n		Invest in Learning\n			Learning Budgets\n			Be Old-School: Dig One Level Deeper\n			Tinker Away\n		Cross-Fertilization\n		Avoid Groupthink\n		Hire Heterogeneously\n	Measuring Innovation\n	Your Personal Upgrade\nChapter 9: Organizing the Organization\n	Structure Principles\n		Teams\n			Team Role\n			Team Size\n			Forming Teams\n		Managers\n			The Management Bit\n			Manager Onboarding\n				Knowledge Transfer\n				Support System\n		Premature Organization\n	Organizational Growth\n		Peter Pan Count\n		Career Ladders\n		Feedback Skeleton\n			Providing Feedback Regularly\n			Soliciting Feedback\n			Responding to Feedback\n	Organizational Knowledge and Support\n		Peer Forums\n		Professional Leadership\n		Horizontal Development\n	Your Personal Upgrade\nChapter 10: Product Mastery\n	How Product Mastery Looks\n	Hinderers of Mastery\n	Bootstrapping Product Mastery\n		Product 101\n		Getting Down to Business\n		Roadmap and Vision\n		The Market\n	Maintaining Mastery\n		Eating Your Own Dogfood\n		Rubbing Elbows with Users\n		Sharing Roadmaps and Vision\n		Watching the Market\n		Customer Success\n		Meta-reviews\n	Your Personal Upgrade\nChapter 11: Conclusion\nAppendix A: Common Tech Executive Titles and Roles\nIndex