Cutting through the noise – becoming myself again

In the last two years, I got tons of advice about how to start my own business, how to find clients, how to market myself, how much to charge, how to position myself, … you name it.

Here is some advice I got:

• You should publish at least five times weekly on LinkedIn to prove you are an expert.
• You should use copywriting frameworks to convert readers to customers.
• With your experience, you should charge more.
• You should productize your services.
• You should use a sales script to be more professional in your sales approach.
• Never give a discount.

Lots of well-meant advice. Led by the desire to build a successful business and my imposter syndrome, I happily took advice openly.

I just forgot one thing: The advice-givers are experts in their field. Not about me.

Their advice seemed universally accepted. Many people are following it “successfully” – for definitions of “success” that likely don’t match mine.

Don’t get me wrong: I am grateful for all the advice I got. The advice can be a valuable inspiration. It often was and is. The mistake is on me.

I got a ton of advice without really thinking about it, even though I should have known better. The advice seemed convincing like it was the right way to do things if you want to be professional. It sounded right because I have heard and read it many times before. I started my own business 20 years ago and ran it for another 10 years. I even started a bunch of smaller ones in between. But when I started my consultancy again in 2022 and fully committed to it in 2023, I acted like I didn’t know anything and listened to advice without question. I wasn’t as careful as I usually am in the desire to do it more professionally.

My learning: If this is how “professional” looks like, I do not want to do it professionally.

This is not me. It does not feel like me. It does not spark joy. It does not create the positive impact I want and was used to having. It is the exact opposite. It felt like a facade of marketing BS with no real value.

Since childhood, I have found joy in finding as simple as possible solutions to complex problems. I love working on challenging problems and solving them. Sometimes, I use code for this. Sometimes, I write. Sometimes, I speak. Always, I first seek a more profound understanding.

My approach in 2023 was all but simple. Too often, it was led by “This is how you have to do it” or “This is how reality works.”

This created a conflict between how I did things and how I felt it was right to do them. It sometimes even removed the joy from activities that I used to enjoy:

• I love to write. I hate to write on a schedule.
• I love to write about things that interest me. I hate to write based on a content plan with (self-imposed) deadlines.
• I love to connect with people and understand their needs. I hate to script conversations.
• I love to help where I can. I hate using sales techniques.
• I love to share what I am offering. I hate to press this into frameworks “because it converts better.”
• I love shaping and discovering my path. I hate following “best practices.”

The most important realization is this: All great collaborations, gigs, engagements, projects, you-name-it, did not come from the things on the right. They came from the stuff on the left. And this is where my focus goes in 2024.

Thinking from first principles

Last year was full of learning and discovery. But this also came with partially losing myself. It’s time to become myself again. It is time to remove the BS.

It is time to think from first principles again: What do I actually want to achieve?

→ Short Answer: Having a positive impact on others, having fun, and living on my own terms.

I love to create in collaboration: companies, communities, culture, code, and content.

I love simplicity.

I understand complex systems and relationships — social, technical, and sociotechnical. – I enjoy this stuff.

I enjoy working with people, reducing complexity, sparking joy, and awakening people’s intrinsic motivation and passion for their work. I love co-creating environments where this can happen. I love helping others create those environments. I love teaching and creating AHA moments in others (and myself).

I love seeing productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction rise as a consequence.

I believe titles and roles are restrictive and don’t define one’s true ability or enjoyment at work. They might outline expectations and duties, but the common practice of assigning only one title or role per person in most companies has more downsides than benefits.

“Not my job” isn’t in my vocabulary. I will do it if it is the most valuable thing I can do.

New Year, New Approach

Putting everything I know together and simplifying things leads to the following:

I removed all the products and productized services I previously offered and replaced them with a single one: Me.

Me. – A decent, authentic human being with way over a decade of experience in software engineering and leadership and a passion for high-performing, self-organizing teams and organizations. Someone who believes in the power of collaboration. Someone who unifies deep technical and deep social skills. Someone who struggles to differentiate between work and hobby because it’s (almost) the same for him. The boundary has always been fluent since I started my first business roughly 20 years ago. I want it that way. I need it that way.

A Single Product:

• Me. (see below for a short list of topics I have helped companies with in the past)

A Simple Approach:

• We discuss your needs and if and how I can help you.
• We define the objectives/goals and scope of our collaboration.
• We collaborate. As long as needed and as much as needed.

Full Transparency and Fair Pricing:

• We define monthly limits appropriate for the objectives.
• You get billed for hours worked, not for contingents.
• You never pay more than we agreed on.

(Past) Topics

The following is an incomplete and shortened list of topics I have helped clients with. I am sharing it as an inspiration about topics where I might positively impact your organization. Still, my interest, experience, and capabilities are not limited to this list.

I have roughly structured them into these categories: leadership, growth, collaboration, tech, and product.

Leadership:

• Development of tech strategy and vision
• Building and developing high-performing teams and organizations
• Building leadership communities for cross-team alignment
• Introducing OKRs and other approaches for focus and alignment
• Facilitating team sessions for better alignment and a real “we” feeling
• Coaching leaders in supporting and building high-performing teams
• Introduction of distributed decision-making processes

Growth:

• Creating clarity about the “how” of org scaling
• Definition of role profiles and development of a (tech) hiring strategy
• Hiring lead engineers and CTOs
• Onboarding engineers and creating better onboarding processes
• Optimizing team structures/topologies and architecture for improved flow and reduced communication overhead
• Creating platform teams for infrastructure and developer experience
• Transformation of “Testing Teams” into “Enabling Teams of QA Experts”
• Preparation for upcoming technical due diligences
• Achieving SOC2 and ISO 27001 compliance without negatively impacting developer productivity and experience

Collaboration:

• Leading cross-team efforts for architecture refactorings
• Training for tools, processes, and methods
• Facilitation of team coding sessions
• Leading collaborative architecture mapping sessions for a common architectural understanding and documentation of the status quo
• Facilitation of retrospectives and incremental development of better ways of working
• Technical and agile coaching for teams, managers, and other individuals for more know-how, improved team dynamics, and intrinsic motivation

Tech:

• Improving software quality by introducing automated tests, better practices and standards
• Making and documenting (architectural) decisions
• Introducing continuous integration and continuous deployments
• Optimizing and automating processes
• Reducing pipeline lead times (often about 70% or more)
• Migrating to the cloud (and from the cloud)
• Refactoring legacy applications into services
• Introducing and improving monitoring and alerting
• Introducing and optimizing “Infrastructure as Code”
• Developing knowledge bases
• Defining and introducing incident management processes
• Defining and collecting metrics and signals for a better understanding of developer experience and productivity
• Reducing software and infrastructure complexity
• Automating dependency updates
• Optimizing cloud and infrastructure costs
• Introducing technical risk/debt inventories to increase transparency and simplify prioritization of investments
• Finding and removing bugs, scaling impediments, and performance bottlenecks
• Defining and driving initiatives for improved developer experience and -productivity

Product:

• Introducing incremental product development
• Finding smaller increments and working in shorter feedback loops
• Defining and collecting metrics and feedback for data-driven product development
• Aligning product and tech strategy
• Implementing features
• Developing prototypes

Curious? Let’s talk!

If something I wrote above made you curious and would like to learn more, or if you would like to work with me, let’s talk.

Message me on LinkedIn or via e-mail, and we will find a date. Or, if it is easier for you, feel free to use my Calendly to choose a time that suits you.

I am looking forward to connecting!

Over to you: Which advice of 2023 turned out to be better left in the old year?