🧠 _

Transformation is a complex undertaking that relies heavily on achieving behavioral change within an organization. Three McKinsey transformation and organizational health experts talk this week about the common pitfalls companies face when attempting to transform, and share tips for avoiding them.

Rajesh Krishnan is a senior partner in our New York office and a leader in our Transformation Practice. He counsels clients on identifying and delivering transformative and sustainable performance improvements, and is a founder of our capability building solution, the Ability to Execute or A2E. Tiffany Vogel is a partner in our Miami office, and is an expert in change management, leadership development, and agile product development. She focuses on financial institutions and state governments, and also serves on the faculty at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. And Matthew Schrimper is an associate partner in our Boston office. He helps clients improve performance through organizational change, and has expertise in large-scale transformations, culture and change management, as well as talent and operating model design.

Related insights

Breaking the mold: Five behaviors of leading growth transformers

Transformation with a capital T

How seven steps can help midsize industrials crack the transformation code

What does it take to run a healthy organization? Find out with this quiz

Help your employees find purpose—or watch them leave

What makes an organization ‘healthy’?

The yin and yang of organizational health

McKinsey Insights on Transformation

McKinsey Transformation on LinkedIn

McKinsey Strategy & Corporate Finance on LinkedIn

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Venture capital firms notoriously embrace risk and take big swings, hoping that one startup will become a monster hit that pays for many other failed investments. This VC approach scares established companies, but it shouldn’t. Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Ilya Strebulaev says that VC firms have proven best practices that all leaders should apply in their own companies. He explains exactly how VC’s operationalize risk, embrace disagreement over consensus, and stay agile in their decision-making—all valuable lessons that apply outside of Silicon Valley. With author Alex Dang, Strebulaev cowrote the new book The Venture Mindset: How to Make Smarter Bets and Achieve Extraordinary Growth and the HBR article “Make Decisions with a VC Mindset.”

Key episode topics include:

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

This interview was recorded at GOTO Copenhagen 2024.
https://gotocph.com

Diana Montalion - Systems Architect, Mentrix Founder & Author of "Learning Systems Thinking"
Kris Jenkins - Developer Advocate, Software Developer, Podcast Host, Conference Speaker & Geek 

RESOURCES
Diana
https://bsky.app/profile/mentrix.bsky.social
https://hachyderm.io/@diana
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianamontalion
https://x.com/dianamontalion
https://github.com/dianamontalion
https://blog.montalion.com
https://learningsystemsthinking.com

Kris
https://bsky.app/profile/krisajenkins.bsky.social
https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins
https://github.com/krisajenkins
http://blog.jenkster.com

RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Diana Montalion • Learning Systems Thinking
Andrew Harmel-Law • Facilitating Software Architecture
Donella H. Meadows • Thinking in Systems
Donella H. Meadows • Limits to Growth
Robert M. Pirsig • Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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This week Carter and Nathan read Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems. A foundational primer on systems thinking, the book explores how stocks, flows, feedback loops, and leverage points shape everything from ecosystems to organizations. Join them as they discuss how systems thinking applies to software engineering, the hidden structures behind burnout and tech debt, and how to make high-leverage changes in complex systems.

-- Books Mentioned in this Episode --

Note: As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

----------------------------------------------------------

Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows

https://amzn.to/4cMB35k (paid link)

Tidy First?: A Personal Exercise in Empirical Software Design by Kent Beck

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Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler

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Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach by Mark Richards and Neal Ford

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One Nation Under Blackmail, Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein by Whitney Alyse Webb

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Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport

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The Software Engineer's Guidebook: Navigating Senior, Tech Lead, and Staff Engineer Positions at Tech Companies and Startups by Gergely Orosz

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What Is ChatGPT Doing ... and Why Does It Work? by Stephen Wolfram

https://amzn.to/4iuSUim (paid link)

----------------

00:00 Intro

01:41 About the Book

03:43 Thoughts on the Book

08:07 Covering the Foundations and Defining Terms

16:36 Feedback loops

22:31 Overconfidence and why models lead us astray.

35:56 Paradigms and Framing

49:30 Leverage Points

01:02:04 Final Thoughts

----------------

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5kj6DLCEWR5nHShlSYJI5L

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/book-overflow/id1745257325

X: https://x.com/bookoverflowpod

Carter on X: https://x.com/cartermorgan

Nathan's Functionally Imperative: www.functionallyimperative.com

----------------

Book Overflow is a podcast for software engineers, by software engineers dedicated to improving our craft by reading the best technical books in the world. Join Carter Morgan and Nathan Toups as they read and discuss a new technical book each week!

The full book schedule and links to every major podcast player can be found at https://www.bookoverflow.io

In this episode of shortcu.tt, hosts Morten and Marilag speak with Aleix Morgadas—engineering strategist, founder of Temperature, and writer on engineering strategy. Together, they explore how engineering strategy, team culture, and cognitive load shape the way modern tech teams operate.Drawing from his experience at companies across Europe, Brazil, and the United States, including ThoughtWorks Creditas & AtomicJar, Aleix offers a thoughtful take on aligning software teams, scaling leadership, and building healthy engineering cultures.

🕒 Episode Timestamps:

00:01:00 – Aleix’s path from developer to strategist

00:03:00 – Engineering culture: Europe vs. Brazil vs. the US00:06:00 – How culture impacts software delivery

00:10:00 – Why engineers struggle to describe company culture00:14:00 – Giving and receiving feedback across cultures

00:18:00 – What is engineering strategy—and why does it matter?

00:26:00 – Common strategy pitfalls and how to avoid them

00:31:00 – Roadmaps vs. strategy: where they overlap and differ

00:40:00 – Cognitive load: how to measure and reduce it

00:49:00 – Behind Temperature: using data to improve engineering teams

00:54:00 – Aleix’s shortcut to building a meaningful strategy

💡 What You’ll Learn:

How to define and implement an engineering strategy

The impact of team culture on collaboration and delivery

Why cognitive load is key to understanding developer productivity

Practical tools and frameworks for engineering leadership

🔗 Resources & Links:

Alex’s Substack – Thoughtful essays on engineering strategy

Teamperature – A tool to measure cognitive load and team focus

💬Connect with Us

Aleix Morgadas

Morten Christensen

Marilag Svennevig

Episode Overview:

Morten and Marilag sit down with Juan Herreros, a principal engineer at Banking Circle, to talk about how Banking Circle evolves its platform engineering practices.

Timestamps:

[00:00:07] - Introduction

[00:00:33] - Juan's Background: From Spain to Denmark, career path in fintech.

[00:01:46] - Banking Circle Overview: Mission and services in cross-border payments.

[00:03:01] - Engineering Structure: Team divisions and technology stack.

[00:05:58] - DevOps Evolution: Transition to a centralized cloud engineering team.

[00:08:04] - Initial Challenges: Dependency on a single person for infrastructure.

[00:10:26] - Improvements: Code-first mentality and reusable components.

[00:15:19] - Kubernetes Adoption: Overcoming challenges and enhancing developer experience.

[00:18:46] - Developer Support: Internal demos and centralized communication channels.

[00:23:02] - Driving Adoption: Strategies for educating and empowering developers.

[00:25:02] - Reluctance to Change: Addressing developer concerns about Kubernetes.

[00:32:00] - Future Plans: Enhancing YAML-based approach and developing user-friendly UIs.

[00:38:34] - Success Metrics: Measuring uptime, deployment frequency, and adoption rates.

[00:40:33] - Juan's Shortcut: Advice on empathy and understanding user needs.

Highlights:

Empathy in Engineering: Juan emphasizes the importance of understanding user needs to build effective solutions.

Continuous Improvement: Banking Circle's journey towards operational consistency and better developer experience.

Metrics for Success: Measuring uptime, deployment frequency, incident count, and adoption rates to ensure business alignment.

Sign up at shortcu.tt to receive the latest episodes straight to your inbox.

In episode 81, Den Delimarsky chats with Kirupa Chinnathambi, a product manager at Google who has built his own personal brand in what is now known as kirupa.com. Kirupa is a talented web developer, designer, writer, and packs so much knowledge in his blog that you can learn how to create great web-based experience on that content alone.

We discuss best ways to balance everything in one's life and still have a successful career, finding the right angles to change a team culture, making your hobby your career, and how to increase your likelihood of building more luck in the day-to-day activities.

You can find Kirupa on the following sites:

The podcast was produced by Den Delimarsky. Music by Wataboi from Pixabay.

If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the show and leave a review or a rating, wherever you are getting your podcast. I really appreciate your feedback and am working to make this podcast more useful for you, the listener, with every episode. Ratings and feedback make it so others can easily discover and enjoy the insights you listen to here!