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How can management decisions lead to the derailment of a train and the deaths of 107 people? In the case of the Amagasaki derailment—and countless other incidents—it came down to the flawed use of metrics.

Many of my clients and partners have noticed the board games behind me in Zoom calls. Isn't it unprofessional to have tabletop games in my office?

This is a deliberate choice. I firmly believe in the educational power of games. They are not just pastimes but effective tools for learning, cultivating skills such as strategic thinking, teamwork, and problem-solving. The only true way to understand a concept well enough to apply it in practice is experiencing it, and the controlled environment of a game is perfect for that.

This isn't a tale of recklessness leading to disaster from which I had to recover. On the contrary, this is about how my early experiences shaped my worldview and the surprising benefits of not being aware of the rules.

Let's build a tricycle with one wheel! Sounds absurd, doesn't it? Yet, the corporate world is rife with the mantra "do more with less." Expecting someone to create a miracle with reduced resources is not just unrealistic, it's counterproductive! So what is the alternative?

The real key to effectiveness with fewer resources isn't about squeezing more out of a reduced workforce. It's about fostering an engineering culture of tiny incremental improvements.

"Putting pressure on a software team to deliver faster is the absolute worst thing you can do!" is the uncomfortable truth every engineering leader should hear.

In my journey as an engineering leader, I've often found myself in hot water for refusing to put pressure on my team. However, resisting the urge to apply pressure is imperative for sustainable team performance.