Jay Day

🤯 Copywriting. It is a secret weapon for remote workers of any role to go from "good" to "great", but especially Technical Program / Project Managers.

🚀 The longer I spend time as a TPM in a remote company, the more I realize that this single skill will give you an incredible boost to become a high performer.

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🌐 Communication is at the heart of program management, especially when teams are dispersed geographically.

📝 Copywriting is the practice of clear, persuasive writing.

🤝 It becomes central to influencing program teams, stakeholders, and your direct reporting line.

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🥊 In a remote environment, your written words often represent you; make them impactful.

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#leadership, #programmanagement, #projectmanagement, #softwaredevelopment, and #technicalprogrammanagement

In 2018, a manager took a chance on me and it completely changed my career trajectory.

There was this manager, Nick. Anybody who knows Nick, likes Nick.

He was running an impactful Big Data projects at ExxonMobil. My role was much less strategically important, and I wasn't all that fulfilled doing internal web-dev support engineering.

I connected with Nick at some internal networking events. I can't recall exactly the first time we met.

Nick was looking for someone to proactively take on a relatively unknown space within ExxonMobil: Building out API's to interface with Big Data systems.

Over the course of several months, we collaborated on moving me into that role. Patience was hard. My role at the time was starting to weigh down on me.

Finally the day came and it was formally announced that I would be moving into Nick's team to help build the API's associated with this Big Data project.

My API skills were shallow, but I had demonstrated a hunger for growth and a technical aptitude that could climb the learning curve.

Nick took a chance on me.

Moving into an API software engineering role was eye opening. I worked harder and longer hours compared to my previous roles at ExxonMobil.

That career opportunity completely shifted my career trajectory!

I gained experience in scaled API engineering, cross-functional collaboration across multiple organizations, hands-on system design problems, technical roadmap creation and management, overwhelming on-call experiences, and building / managing a team of engineers.

It was the refiners-fire of my early career.

But here's the real lesson with that experience:

Give others a chance. It could change their lives. I want to find ways to "pass it on" by giving others a chance. So many people have so much to offer, they are just looking for that opportunity to show it.

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😩 There is at least one big thing I wish the public school system didn’t teach me about problem solving.

It has taken time to unlearn.

Public school taught me that problem solving is a linear path leading to an inevitable, single “right” answer.

📉 This “linear problem solving” thinking slowed down my growth beyond public school.

I was looking at life with a “what’s the right answer?” perspective. Surely, there was a right answer.

🤯 Luckily, I’ve had several experiences which taught me this problem solving paradigm is false.

Especially the way my college courses were structured where there was more autonomy given for the problem solving path and potential “answers”, as long as the outcomes were achieved.

🎯 So what is a better way to think about problem solving?

Problem solving is a non-linear path. Usually resulting in multiple potential “right answers” that can achieve the outcome in different ways. Each option with its own set of consequences.

Any TPM worth their salt knows that there are rarely cut-and-dry easy solutions for complex, scaled problems.

🧩 There are multiple "correct answers".

The real challenge is being able to strategically digest each option, it’s consequences, and align teams on the chosen “right answer”.

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Stepping down from my soap box now.

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"Value gets created over compounding execution for years and years and years" - Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI

If you know how to execute on your own, you're doing pretty well.

If you know how to execute with others, you're doing amazing.

If you know how to lead execution at-scale across multiple organization, you're absolutely next-level.

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Follow me for more on the following:

#leadership, #programmanagement, #projectmanagement, #softwaredevelopment, and #technicalprogrammanagement