What a great night! A whole lot of fun with insightful and entertaining talks from Benjamin Wirtz and Herry Wiputra on leadership and transformational change. You can watch a recording of the whole discussion at this link, or have a read below for some of the highlights:
Think like the sun. Start the day by bringing light (clarity) for your teams, bring them energy so they feel safe and inspired and empower (solar power) them ensuring they have what they need to succeed.
Tech and product leadership is a bit different. Not only do you need to lead your teams and be focused on building the skills to do that, you also need to work on your craft. We operate in a very fast (and getting faster) domain and we need to keep up!
All leaders (except for maybe the toxic sociopaths) experience some sense of imposter syndrome at times. Even Mike Cannon-Brookes - check out his Ted talk on the topic.
Find a mentor, build your community and seek help so you can be your awesome best.
Herry took us on a captivating tour of his transformative leadership at hipages, sharing with us "how it started" with rigid functional silos and top-down mandates to "how it's going" with empowered cross-functional teams and a culture of experimentation and accountability.
It was Marty Cagan's Transformed IRL!
One of the approaches Herry took was to have SLT members outside the product and tech organisation sponsor product teams. This was a great way to build 2-way empathy. Have you ever heard a Head of Sales suggesting prioritising 5 things down to 2?
So how do you know if you're doing a good job? What does success as a leader look like? We loved hearing Herry re-thinking the approach of asking the team for feedback, shifting to the view that, "they'd tell me if there was something wrong". (and i don't give a .... anyway) Liberating!
As always with events, it is fantastic to bring the community together, see the regulars and some new faces too. The volume was LOUD in the room as people got to know each other, shared stories and set up time to keep the connection going. Really joyous.