Codemania 2019 Opening Keynote Talk by Nick Caldwell

I had the privilege to attend the Codemania conference 2019 and enjoyed the talks a lot!

The opening keynote by Nick Caldwell is an inspirational one about leadership and management.

Nick Caldwell: https://codemania.io/speakers/2019/nick

Nick’s slides: https://www.slideshare.net/nickcaldwell

Some key points from my notes:

• When you need to double/ triple the team size in 1 year, you need to find good leaders/ managers first
• Sending out Questionnaires for internal staff to identify their attributes and see whether they are more suitable to transit into managers (people oriented) or architects (tech oriented) is a good way to start
• When we have 10 people, we have 10 leaders
• When we have 100 people, we want to have 100 leaders., but it is usually not possible
• Leadership does not equal to management
• Managers: predictable work, guarding quality. Ruthless, confident, work with process and people mainly. e.g. Leslie Grooves
• Leaders: disrupting the status quo, challenging existing ideas. Humorous, charismatic. e.g. Robert Oppenheimer
• Do not wait for boss to tell you when there are people for you to lead
• To scale leadership: get employees to find OPPORTUNITIES to lead, not positions
• Leadership breadcrumb: Visibility > Discussion > Wait, Repeat > Sponsor > Reward > Participation
• Golden question to surface the opportunities to lead: “ What would you do if you have another pair of hands?”
• Anyone can be a leader. You don’t need to have ALL of the leadership traits specified on a book such as Vision, Empathy, Empowerment, Charisma, Expertise…etc. E.g. Steve Jobs makes centralised decision and you can argue that he does not score high in Empowerment. Amazon logistics workers work in terrible conditions and Jeff Bezos may lack some empathy
• Passion unlocks leadership potential
• Create leadership moments
• Nordstorm Employee Handbook — Rule #1: Use good judgement in all situations. There will not be additional rules
• Mentors and sponsors are different
• Look for sponsors, people who are in higher positions and are able to distribute opportunities. People who can open doors and share hard feedback
• The most valuable coding language is: English
• People and relationships > code
• Leaders are made when you have these 3 elements: Opportunities, Passion and Permission