In your org, who owns coordination and communication between an engineering team and everyone else? Is it an explicitly named role or an implied responsibility of the manager?

When the role is implicit, it lives somewhere between manager, tech lead and whatever IC has the most context that week. This works, until it doesn’t.

And when it doesn’t, balls get dropped, the bottom line suffers through a rocky or delayed launch, ICs get burned and trust in the ecosystem of the org falters.

There are certain moments, with certain conditions of projects, where we are pulled in 10 other different directions, coordinating several pieces, dealing with politics, red tape, have a fear of rocking the boat or innumerable other reasons.

This is not a failure of leadership, it’s a simple structural gap that appears in moments when specific constellations align.

I was recently speaking to a dear friend and he was sharing how difficult a project was because the implicit connectors were spread thin or managing too much at once. Simple things like getting a fully functioning dev environment took a long time and greatly impeded the team. It resulted in a project that was a slog, for over a year - the launch was rocky and the overall morale of the team was low.

While he voiced the difficulties, they ultimately weren’t implemented and reasoning wasn’t passed on. The right people weren’t there and who he relied on for making those connections wasn’t providing more than binary yes or no responses. The team simply didn’t have access to what they needed.

When the connective tissue for a project is an explicit role for a specific project - we have smoother launches, happier ICs and an overall better work ecosystem.

The beauty of this role is that it is contagious. When honest communication and clear coordination is modeled, others pick it up. I’ve experienced this first hand in my time joining teams as an IC and either officially or unofficially becoming dev lead.

This is the work I am doing - joining teams in their difficulties, in the muck of it. With you through a launch, joining as a “fractional dev lead”, as “connective tissue” as an “initiative partner” in order to help you move from implicit murky comms to explicit, clear and empowered coordination.

I’m super curious how people are experiencing this - whether you are leading a group of teams, managing a single team or an individual contributor, it would be a great joy to chat. Reach out.