The request to “demonstrate strategic thinking” often feels like a very tall order for first-line managers of engineering teams. After all, you’re not out there casting the corporate vision or setting the company’s direction. You have projects, releases, and deliverables and people to organize. Your work and your job feel extremely tactical.
But with every project, you face constraints. There’s a limit on scope, time, precision, security, reliability, or even beauty. And it is your decision, your strategic thinking, that determines which constraints matter most right now.
As a manager, you get to decide which work gets staffed, which standards are enforced, which issues get escalated, which priorities get dropped. You get to decide when “good enough” is “good enough.” And even if you’re not the sole decision maker, you get to decide how much of your energy you put into defending your position on any of those questions. And with every one of those decisions is the option to choose not to do something.
The question is, how do you decide? Do you go with whatever your gut says today? Are you swayed by the most recent or highest ranking voice of influence? Or do you have a vision of what success looks like for your team members, for your product or service, or for your own career path that helps you decide what to say “no” to?
Even as a first-line manager of individual engineers, you have an opportunity to practice and demonstrate strategic thinking. If you’d like to evaluate how you make your decisions so you can become more strategic, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.
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