An IC no longer
22 Apr 2026I’ve never been an Integrated Circuit, but it’s also been a while since I was an Individual Contributor in my career.
I like it, but it’s a weird shift that’s taken me way longer than I thought it would to really come to terms with.
As a lot of my usual, more technical posts generally get eaten up by what I’m doing at work, which limits my ability to talk about them. I’ve decided to write more on the other parts of the job, whatever you call them, whether it’s management, leadership, team-lead, or coordinator.
Technology(For the most part)- +Process
- +People
My thoughts have always been that leadership is about removing friction. Digging out obstacles and other impediments to let the team push on. The best leaders I’ve worked with have always been honest, clear and generally dedicated to that thankless task.
Related to this, I’ve been enjoying reading more books about the people side recently, about leadership and the facet of psychology that comes into it, as well as finding some new opportunities for insight (mostly of my own inadequacy). I am continually surprised however that just reading a few (of the right) books on a subject can give you such a great leg up.
As well as new things, there’s also rediscovery of things I’ve read or immersed myself in before. A good example of this is Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet and intent (Leader/Leader) based interaction. I was reintroduced to it via a reference to the Radio Free XP podcast in a podcast from the absolutely excellent writer (and technologist) Nikhil Suresh. I haven’t linked to the specific episode, you should read (and listen to) all his stuff!
Turn the Ship Around
The biggest thing that stood out to me this time I reread the book was the sheer amount of respect for people’s time and experience in all the interactions. What sounds like a little thing, with requests going to all levels of approval at once, rather than serially.
I’ve lived through the serial approval points, with things taking literal weeks to see the other side of approval. Over time, it abrades away all respect for the process. I don’t know why this stuck out to me so much this time.
It might be related to the approach I take to self-service in the platforms and solutions I help build. I believe it’s a necessity in all areas and really relates to the deep respect of people’s time. Build the system and the guardrails, then get out of the way!
I originally came to the approach of self-service from the facet of building ownership, the respect realisation came later. Because it’s self-service, my aim was to attach the element of work added by the person, which then builds that feeling of ownership, by respecting their time and letting them build their way (or that’s the theory anyway). I’m not sure there’s been overwhelming evidence that’s working for me yet, but it seems to be building trust.
Anyways, great book and always worth a re-read to see what you missed last time around. Marquet’s site and his Leadership Nudges are well worth investing time into.