The hardest two years of my professional career were miserable. Long days, long weeks, endless months. Countless flights and numerous nights in hotels, often for no other reason than to be seen in and around the office. The customer was tough, our leadership was demanding, and it felt like a no-win situation.
In hindsight, it was also the most professionally rewarding situation I’ve ever been in.
The System We Had to Rebuild
I was leading a team of over 150 Adobe Commerce Product Managers, Business Consultants (BCs), Technical Consultants (TCs), Scrum Masters, developers, and more across numerous time zones and at least two continents.
We were working with our compatriots in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), as well as a separate third organization responsible for inventory management. The entire arrangement and architecture was unique, to say the least, but that’s not what we’re here to discuss and I am no Enterprise Architect.
I already said the customer was tough, but that’s largely underselling it. As is common, the priorities and demands seemed to change on a dime… and when something didn’t work because of an issue with the API from that third party? It was definitely our fault.
Not only did the customer change priorities, they enforced changes to our operating model that we had to respond to just as quickly. That’s how I oversaw our scaling from fewer than 20 people to more than 150. One morning we woke up and found that instead of singular roadmapping and solutioning calls, we’d be breaking out into groups of Pods that we were not properly staffed to handle. Then came more Pods. Then came merged Pods. Then more again, then fewer.
And the expected output, naturally, climbed along with the scaling of the Pods. So we built out an entire team in India to manage that development.
Suddenly, I had to keep 150+ people across disparate roles, priorities, geographies, and time zones aligned and, perhaps more challengingly, motivated to deliver in one of the most caustic and confusing situations I’ve experienced.
And We Started Humming
So I did what I do.
First, I collaborated with the leaders on my team—the Lead BC and Lead Technical Architect (TA)—to whiteboard ideas for how to make this work. Then I spent the night crouched over Lucidchart designing an organization and workflow that made sense. We had pairs of TCs and BCs in each Pod. They would send the output of their daily sessions to their counterparts in India. I’d work with my lead Scrum Master in India to ensure we had priorities aligned, and he’d work with his Scrum Masters to ensure we delivered against the standards set by the onshore TCs and BCs, as led by their offshore counterparts.
And we started humming.
The Newsletter Was Part of the System
But the team was still frustrated, so then I really leaned into the Me of it all and started a newsletter.
Every Monday morning, my team, related teams, and our entire leadership team got their newsletter in their inbox.
And it worked. The team loved it. We were clearer and more aligned. The temperature of the rooms improved, even as we shared our frustrations with the larger frustrations.
It felt good. Leading that team through what I am confident most (if not all) would still call one of the worst professional experiences they’ve had… and finding a way to make them not only productive and effective, but maybe even helping them find ways to enjoy it just a little bit more.
What Fuels the Engine
That was the thing. Finding clarity in the chaos and helping the team see where we were going and how the hell we were going to get there.
That is what fuels the engine that wakes me up every morning.
To me, there is nothing better. Fall into the problem, identify the right collaborators, implement a solve, and iterate until you can’t figure out how to make it work any better… all without failing the humans in the process.
It’s relatively easy to design a great system. But doing that in a way that actually enrolls your team into the process? A system that keeps churn low (I had none) while increasing delivery and reliability? That’s the stuff.
And that’s what I keep going back to.
The Work I Want to Grow Into
I love Gradial. Nearly five months in, it’s been fantastic. And as my brain inevitably starts imagining what comes next, I find myself thinking less about title or some particular rung on the ladder and more about the kind of work I want to grow into.
When I think about the things I am most proud of in my career, I always go back to those two miserable years. Not because I enjoyed them—ask anyone near me, I was appropriately miserable—but because there was a team that needed direction, a system that needed rebuilding, and a lot of great people—some of the best I’ve ever worked with—who just needed someone to help it all make a little more sense and feel a bit more tolerable.
I don’t know exactly what comes next. I’m increasingly convinced that’s what I want it to look like.
