Wade Chambers, Chief Engineering Officer @ Amplitude, joins us to discuss what it looks like to empower individual engineers & overall engineering teams and recommendations for creating a culture that cultivates ownership! First, Wade defines what true ownership looks like – and what it doesn’t look like. We cover frameworks for identifying & cultivating high ownership in individuals & across teams, implementing systems that encourage ownership, communicating shared vision / goals, and coaching engineers when passing the baton of ownership. We also discuss navigating difficult conversations around empowerment / ownership – or lack thereof – and Wade shares examples of impactful questions to ask.
Wade Chambers will be leading Engineering at Amplitude. Amplitude is the leading digital analytics platform that helps companies unlock the power of their products. Wade has over 25 years of engineering leadership experience, both advising companies and being hands-on in key leadership positions at companies such as Included Health, Twitter, TellApart, Proofpoint, Yahoo, and Opsware. He is a deep technical expert with a proven track record of scaling teams, leaders, market-defining technology innovations, and business growth.
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SHOW NOTES:
- Why empowering engineering teams to own their mission matters (3:16)
- Common traps that prevent eng leaders from empowering teams (5:15)
- Understanding the “why” behind ownership & systemizing individual ownership (7:09)
- Systems change for empowerment: Aligning company vision, outcomes, competencies & behaviors (9:48)
- How to bring someone from low ownership back to high ownership (13:49)
- Developing trust & having tough conversations around ownership (15:17)
- Nonobvious factors to that erode ownership over time (17:42)
- Empowering teams through meaningful missions, clear expectations, defining success, & ongoing check-ins (20:55)
- Identifying engineers w/ competencies & behaviors that align w/ your org’s vision & goals (24:00)
- When having too much ownership becomes a problem (27:22)
- Wade’s process for officially transferring ownership (28:47)
- Coaching and navigating conversations around ownership (32:01)
- Impactful questions to ask during the coaching / check in process (34:08)
- Closing gaps in leadership competencies & behaviors (37:27)
- Coaching leaders to align personal growth with org goals (39:25)
- Rapid fire questions (41:34)
This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:
Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
The Engineering Leadership Podcast