Why You Need to Take Risks as an Engineering Leader | GitHub’s VPE Neha Batra
Apr 30, 2024
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Neha Batra, VP of Engineering at GitHub, discusses the importance of taking risks in leadership, establishing communication pathways, and conducting AMAs with your team. She also shares insights on building trust, accountability, and gathering signals from team members. Neha highlights the pitfalls leaders should avoid and the value of curiosity in navigating experiences like dating.
Establishing effective communication paths is crucial for enhancing engineering performance.
Developing a framework involves creating consistent conversation patterns to drive team alignment more effectively.
Accruing social capital is akin to managing a risk budget, enabling individuals to take calculated risks for growth.
Deep dives
Building a Metrics Program for Engineering Performance Improvement
Building a metrics program that enhances engineering performance involves establishing effective communication paths, forward planning, and driving accountability in teams. By identifying consistent conversation patterns and streamlining translation processes between team members and leadership, ownership of the process can lead to increased transparency, easier communication, and improved team performance.
Developing a Framework for Enhancing Company Alignment
Senior leaders often find themselves bridging business needs, talent, and product execution, facing challenges while focusing on engineering efficiency. Developing a framework involves creating communication paths, forward planning, and fostering accountability to strengthen company alignment. By aligning consistent conversation patterns and simplifying translation processes, leaders can drive team alignment more effectively.
Balancing Risk Budget in Decision-Making
Accruing social capital over time is likened to a risk budget, enabling individuals to take calculated risks that can lead to major improvements or setbacks. Managing a risk budget involves quick reactions to failures and impactful actions for successful outcomes, fostering growth and enabling individuals to experiment, evolve, and build trust within organizations.
Transformation Through Communication Pathways and Accountability
Effective communication pathways and accountability are essential for leadership growth and organizational success. Building trust with teams through transparent communication, honoring commitments, and nurturing accountability creates an environment for personal and professional development, ultimately fostering high-performing teams and achieving strategic goals.
Navigating Leadership Challenges and Strategic Growth
Navigating leadership challenges entails patience, strategic restraint, and a focus on nurturing personal growth and team development. Balancing blocking and tackling tasks with coaching initiatives, creating space for experimentation, and adapting a strategic mindset pave the way for effective leadership and sustainable organizational growth.
This week, I sat down with Neha Batra, VP of Engineering for Core Productivity at GitHub. Our conversation is about the value of taking calculated risks in engineering leadership, using a “risk budget," and how you can leverage your social capital to take risks that help your career.
Neha also shares her insights on senior engineering leaders' challenges when aligning business needs with talent and product execution. She discusses her framework for strengthening company alignment and engineering efficiency using established communication paths.
Episode Highlights: 00:26 Frameworks that strengthen company alignment 03:11 How should you channel frustration into creation? 05:58 Conceptualizing your risk budget 12:53 Strategies for building communication pathways 16:04 Conducting AMA's with your team 21:47 How do you get team members to take accountability? 25:27 How do you gather signals from your team? 29:13 Mistakes leaders make you can learn from 36:32 Building curiosity into mundane experiences like dating