Empowered Engineering: Unlock The Secrets of Functional Transformation Success
As someone who’s lived through their fair share of engineering challenges and emerged all the wiser (if a little older) for it, I understand that starting a journey to functional transformation can be daunting. If you currently find your engineering team grappling with silos, performance issues, cultural disconnects, dubious accountability, a lack of alignment and ineffective processes then you’re certainly not alone.
You might not even recognise or be able to label those issues as specific challenges - you just know there’s room for improvement and that things could be better.
Making things better is what I do. Bringing two decades of deep, hands-on experience (and a PhD I’m not shy about feeling proud of) I hope to help make the path of organisational change a little easier.
My experience of many functional transformation projects revealed a set of critical elements that needed to align to achieve a successful outcome. I’ll outline them below.
The Crux of the Matter: Observe, Watch, Listen
To achieve functional transformation, first, you must see what needs to change and why. Delve into the heart of your team’s performance and behaviour in functional and cross-functional situations. Give feedback, ask questions, open dialogue. How is performance tracked? What’s the verbal and non-verbal dialogue within the team and with wider stakeholders? How are issues negotiated? It’s within these pockets of knowledge that you will identify the vital enhancements needed and pave the way for better dynamics with your team. Take a look at these HBR insights into the power of listening in helping people change.
Lead by Example: Demonstrate the Required Behaviours
Leadership is not about telling people what to do; it’s about showing people how it’s done. As the leader, you set the compass. It’s up to you to inspire the team and gain their buy-in first for you as the leader and second for your vision and their part in it. Your actions are what chart this course, and through leading by example you tap into the remarkable human capability for unconscious observational learning.
If you are accountable, accountability becomes a shared value. If you are authentic and transparent, so too will your team be. If you demonstrate respect and consideration for all stakeholders, they’ll see that it’s important and possible.
From Paper to Practice: Align Strategy and Values
Where does your engineering team sit within the wider business landscape, and how do individual roles tie back to company-level strategy and values? When individual goals complement wider business objectives, every function is synced towards shared ambitions and the entire business becomes a cohesive network.
It’s also a way to demonstrate that your engineering team is more than merely a cost centre, but rather an investment towards achieving a wider goal. We all feel the difference between being valued as a person and for the outcome we create. Shared purpose - knowing we’re helping build something bigger than ourselves - helps us feel invested in objectives and valued for our contribution. See this research from Gartner about personal value and purpose at work.
Defining the Gold Standard: Clearly Outline Expectations
The canvas for transformation is best painted with sharp, vivid pictures of what is expected and what is required to achieve these outcomes. Your engineering leaders can only manage transgressions when you’ve all invested in clearly defining expectations in the first place. What do you want the end result to look like? How do you want the team to operate in terms of performance objectives and behaviour? It’s the behaviour that takes the most work because it’s here, in the soft skills, teamwork, communication and dilemma handling where real transformation takes root and prospers.
A Team’s True Worth: Talent Management
Task your engineering leaders with identifying the team’s shining stars and those with challenging performance or behaviours who may need more guidance. High-performing team members can be agents of change - providing them with the opportunity to further develop their capabilities whilst nurturing those who need support. This is the essence of leadership - empowering and supporting the entire team to flourish, fostering potential and embedding a culture of continuous improvement and recognition.
Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: Collaborate on a Priority Improvement Project
Hierarchical, top-down leadership is a thing of the past. Inclusive, innovative teams get better results. Why? Because all resources, skills, ideas, perspectives and experiences are brought to the table. Collaborate with your engineering team to pinpoint a priority improvement project to achieve business-wide impact. Don’t come in with the solutions - and don’t even come in with the problem. Ask the team to determine what they believe the priority should be. It could be anything from organisation design, delivery timescales or quality improvements.
The impetus remains to harness collective brainpower in pursuit of a common goal. What the team learn from this exercise is potentially worth even more than the tangible improvements they achieve. Their voice is valued and heard, their horizons are broadened to include business- wide thinking and cross-functional collaboration. Can you see how this would work to strengthen your engineering team’s relationships, engagement and performance?
Hand-in-Hand towards Progress: Support For Delivery Improvement
It’s up to you to provide direct support and coaching to the team in delivering the priority project. But by support, I don’t mean standing at the helm. This takes rolling up your sleeves and joining in the hard, fulfilling work of progress. Flattening out that hierarchical structure as above means you must bring your unique skills, perspectives and experiences to the table. It’s not about being the expert, but about sharing your expertise.
Branching Out: Encouraging Cross-Functional Collaboration
Promote a culture of inter-departmental collaboration and consideration, where you’re not merely magnifying a team’s performance but alleviating the pain points of neighbouring departments and stakeholders. Future-centric engineering success lies in shedding the silo mentality, embracing interconnectedness and a team spirit that’s as wide as the entire company.
Constant Calibrations: Feedback is Critical
Open up regular formal and informal dialogues for constructive, two-way feedback and learning. Talk about the plan, the process, the outcomes and the experiences. However, the real magic lies in translating these conversations into action. Implement suggested tweaks, refine strategies and closely mentor your team through several cycles of this process until it becomes second nature.
The Payoff: Transformation Success
This methodology has yielded remarkable performance, behavioural and engagement outcomes time and again, validating its real-world effectiveness. It will require a hefty time and responsibility investment from leadership, but the dividends - a thoroughly transformed, efficient, vibrant, connected and engaged team - are worth it.
If this discussion has stirred questions, or you’d like to explore your transformation needs more deeply, please do reach out for a chat. As someone who has traversed these waters many times, I assure you the journey of transformation is worth every step.