Unlocking Big Ideas: How to Drive Adoption and Measure Impact in Tech Leadership
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Preparing the interview
Complete interview transcript & analysis below
Enhanced transcript with interviewer insights
INTERVIEWER
When you have a big idea, You hear that in the background? You don't hear it. OK, good. There's a, a car alarm going on out there, so I didn't want it coming in through the microphone. Um,
CANDIDATE
OK.
INTERVIEWER
Uh, when you, whether as an IC or, you know, in any lead role that you've had, right, but it doesn't matter. But when you have a big idea, oh, I've got this, you know, big idea. I wanna go do this thing. I think this is important, whatever. How do you, how do you drive adoption for it, for a vision, an idea, whatever it is. How, just walk me through how you drive adoption for, for something that you think is important.
CANDIDATE
Um, well, it, I think it comes back to, um, what What's valued, you, you need to draw a direct line between the big idea and what the business values, right? And if the big idea is, hey, you know, if we switch programming languages from X to Y, um, there will be a 10x. Reduction in And and costs. Well, yeah, I mean, all businesses will love it, but there's also that side of, OK, what, what am I really trading off here? Um, and it's just making, making the business aware of, um, yes, there's this big idea, um, but here's making them aware of like the pros and cons of this big idea. Um, cause it's very easy to sell people on the, on the big idea, um, by, you know, hey, this is great, we're gonna save a lot of money, but also we're gonna have to retrain our existing team, or we're gonna have to hire people, um, and whatnot. So, so for me, so it's just tying a, a direct, making a direct connection between a big idea and what the businesses' goals are.
Interviewer Insight
to this point in the interview, this was the best answer yet. It was too short on details and answers to the rhetorical questions, but a good start.
INTERVIEWER
And so how do you know how well your idea is being adopted? Uh, by other teams or partner teams that you need to work with.
CANDIDATE
I know how well?
INTERVIEWER
Like how do you, how do you know if they're bought in or not?
CANDIDATE
Oh, people vote with their feet, so if they're doing, um, you know, if they're executing on an idea, um, I, I guess I'll be aware of it, but, um, they might be trying and might be getting pushed back, so it's just, I guess. I should have put this. Hm Just trying to think here. Um, How, how well are they adopted the idea, um. I mean, uh, I mean, outside of like me just seeing whether they're doing or not doing it or not, um, I, I, I guess talking to the teams that would find value in, um, executing on, find value in the idea itself, um, and seeing, you know, I guess reaching out to them and seeing what's going on. I mean, that, that would be the I don't, I don't know, man, I, I feel like, I don't think it's a tricky question, but like, I almost feel like there's a, there's something I'm missing in my thinking with regards to this.
Interviewer Insight
overall this is trending at best to an L5 leader position. Nothing demonstrated thus far leads interviewer to believe that this candidate would drive large scale change in an org. Could manage a small team maybe. Candidate is not presenting as having worked to solve complex problems across orgs with conflicting resources or priorities.
INTERVIEWER
Uh, OK, well, then, let me try a different angle on it. How would you stay on top of the details? Like if you're working with a partner team and you're reliant on them, right, to kind of implement this, this something as part of your big idea, your vision, right? How do you stay on top of the details of what they're doing to remain assured that aligns with what you're trying to do?
CANDIDATE
details, um. I. Is If we have like group communication, you know, if we had Slack, um, I would, um, include them in it and or, um, just reach out to folks, um, on email periodically. Um, and if need be, uh, make phone calls. Um, to them to see um how I can help, um, drive adoption for the idea. Um, if, if I need to go over with donuts, um, I have no problem doing that, um, and I have done that, so. Um, And, you know, I, I, I guess. You know, using Slack and emails would be a nice way and maybe even spreadsheets would be a, a, a nice way of keeping track of, um, the state of adoption for this idea uh with each group, um, and being able to, uh, maybe at, at some point highlight it to, uh, you know, folks that are interested in, uh, how the progress of this initiative is. OK.
Interviewer Insight
This is not sufficient for a manager who is working across teams, especially in the case of a manager handling teams for which they do not have direct managerial control. There needs to be well understood and defined processes which all the candidate to step into a new company an excel.
Interviewer Insight
No alignment meetings? No shared metrics? This is not how a highly performant org would work.
Expert Assessment
Interviewer assessment - would be used in a hiring meeting
This answer block was the best up to this point in the interview in that the candidate was able to articulate and map the needs of vision to the needs of the company or customer. The setup was good. What was not sufficient was the lack of a repeatable process or set of managerial framework for how the candidate would stay on top of the progress of related teams. This is critical in orgs where work stretches across divisions.