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Thriving Through Change: Leadership Strategies for Uncertain Times

Introduction

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, change is the only constant. Whether it's organizational restructuring, industry disruptions, or global events like the COVID-19 pandemic, teams and leaders face unprecedented levels of uncertainty. In her insightful InfoQ presentation "Thriving through Change: Leading through Uncertainty," Jennifer Davis, an engineering manager at Google, shares valuable strategies for not just surviving but thriving during periods of transformation.

Drawing from her experience leading DevRel engineering teams through significant organizational changes, Davis offers a framework that empowers teams to navigate uncertainty with resilience and purpose. This blog post explores her key insights and practical approaches to leadership during times of change.

The Reality of Change in Modern Organizations

Davis begins by acknowledging the universal nature of change in today's workplace. From her perspective as a DevRel engineering leader at Google, she highlights how her team faced significant transformation:

"Last year, after years of looking at our organization, we started a transformation. We recognized the ever-increasing challenge of what our org as DevRel was trying to do, and specifically DevRel engineering. How many different APIs, how many products launching? How can we actually deliver samples in a meaningful way?"

Her team underwent substantial restructuring, going from 100 people to eventually just 11, while still being responsible for maintaining thousands of code samples across multiple programming languages and products. This context sets the stage for understanding why effective change leadership is crucial.

Four Pillars for Thriving Through Change

Davis outlines four essential areas that leaders should focus on to help their teams navigate and thrive through periods of uncertainty:

1. Embrace Functional Leadership

At the core of Davis's approach is the concept of functional leadership, inspired by management pioneer Mary Parker Follett. This leadership philosophy is defined not by power but by empowerment:

"Leadership is not defined by the exercise of power, but by the capacity to increase the sense of power among those led."

Davis emphasizes that everyone can be a leader, regardless of their formal position. When approaching a new team, she recommends:

Do nothing initially - Avoid making immediate changes that could add to existing uncertainty
Understand existing roles and responsibilities - Learn what people already think they're responsible for
Build relationships - Discover individual motivations, goals, and concerns
Identify strengths and growth opportunities - Observe team members in action to understand their capabilities
Connect people with opportunities - Help team members grow in ways that align with their interests

Building trust is fundamental to this approach. Davis shares her core values of authenticity, kindness, and trust, noting that being vulnerable as a leader creates space for team members to bring their authentic selves to work.

Managing Healthy Conflict

A crucial component of functional leadership that Davis emphasizes is the ability to foster healthy conflict while addressing destructive patterns:

"Healthy conflict is an important part of team cohesion and finding great outcomes."

Davis distinguishes between healthy conflict (which fosters creativity and builds stronger bonds) and unhealthy conflict that can damage team dynamics. She notes that healthy conflict includes:

Open communication
Timely, constructive feedback
Receptiveness to others' ideas

She specifically warns against allowing patterns of contempt or dismissiveness to persist, as these undermine psychological safety. Davis also highlights the particular challenge of interteam conflict in DevRel contexts:

"Within DevRel, we cannot be an 'us and them.' We have to work with so many product teams, with tech writing, engineering teams across the org, security, OSPO. When you're trying to achieve larger, big-scale impacts, you are literally forcing your virtual team to not be effective because you have caused a problem by turning into an us versus them."

Her solution involves clearly defining roles and responsibilities so team members understand when to "disagree but commit" to decisions.

2. Establish Metrics that Matter

Davis emphasizes the importance of meaningful measurements that align with team goals and organizational value. Rather than focusing solely on traditional metrics like technical debt reduction, she recommends identifying metrics that directly connect to user value.

For her DevRel engineering team, these metrics included:

System green - Early detection of issues before they reach customers
Time to ship - Measuring from PR creation to documentation availability
Rollbacks - Tracking when samples need to be reverted
Release cadence - Monitoring how frequently new samples are added to the catalog

She stresses the importance of getting leadership buy-in for these metrics and ensuring they reflect what truly matters to users and the organization.

Connecting Daily Work to Strategic Objectives

Davis introduces the concept of a "common work item vocabulary" that helps team members understand how their individual tasks contribute to larger goals:

"We have OKRs. Then we have projects that map out to those OKRs, and have impacts and business decisions. If we're all doing work our own way, yes, everyone gets to choose how we do the work, but how we document how we do the work needs to be consistent."

This framework allows every team member to trace their work back to organizational objectives, providing clarity during times of change. It also enables leaders to ensure work is level-appropriate and equitably distributed, while increasing transparency and reducing unnecessary conflict.

3. Craft Supportive Environments

Creating an environment where teams can thrive during change requires intentional effort. Davis offers several practical approaches:

Self-care for Leaders

"Take care of yourself first, because leadership is hard. We don't talk enough about how hard it is to be an effective leader."

Davis shares her personal strategies for maintaining well-being, including daily walks and creative hobbies like crochet, emphasizing that each person must discover what works for them.

Team Rituals and Boundaries

Establishing clear team norms and rituals creates stability during uncertain times. Davis's team implements:

Explicit meeting agendas - Clearly stating the purpose and expectations for team gatherings
Music to start meetings - Creating connection points for distributed teams
Temperature checks - Giving space for team members to express how they're feeling
Kudos at meeting end - Practicing giving and receiving positive feedback
Meaningful goodbyes - Acknowledging team members who leave with appreciation

Regarding the importance of proper goodbyes, Davis notes:

"I don't own my people. I am sad when they leave. The opportunity to give them appreciation, to reflect, to share this in a team setting, is the most amazing gift. We do not do this enough to say goodbye, and we wish you well. Because the industry is so small, we are going to connect with these people again and again."

Minimize Human Toil

Davis advocates for automating repetitive tasks to free up human creativity:

"Minimize the human toil. Let's maximize what the machines do. Don't maximize what the machines do and give all the toil to the humans."

Her team uses GitHub Actions to automate context gathering, linting, and standards checking, allowing team members to focus on higher-value work.

Encourage Cross-Team Projects

Collaboration across teams creates leadership opportunities and brings together diverse specialists to achieve better outcomes. Davis shares how her team's "Avocano solution" benefited from cross-functional collaboration.

4. Foster Continuous Learning

The fourth pillar of Davis's framework focuses on creating an environment of ongoing growth and development. This approach ensures teams can adapt to change rather than being overwhelmed by it.

"Include training and educations intentionally in planning. I always slice off the top 20%, and I say, this is going to be some kind of training, education."

Davis's strategies for promoting continuous learning include:

Friction logging - Documenting challenges in user journeys to improve products
Decision records - Capturing the context of decisions for future reference
Show and tell sessions - Creating opportunities to share work and learnings
Open source contributions - Encouraging participation in external projects (with proper organizational policies)
Industry conferences and training - Supporting participation in external learning opportunities

She emphasizes that continuous learning shouldn't be an afterthought but rather an intentional, planned component of team operations.

Practical Applications for Leaders

Davis's framework offers several practical takeaways for leaders navigating change:

Delegate leadership - Clearly define roles and responsibilities to empower team members
Build trust through vulnerability - Share your values and create space for authentic connection
Manage conflict constructively - Address unhealthy patterns while encouraging productive disagreement
Measure what matters to users - Focus on metrics that reflect real value, not just activity
Connect daily work to strategic goals - Help team members see how their contributions matter
Create stability through rituals - Establish team practices that provide consistency during change
Automate the mundane - Use technology to reduce toil and free up human creativity
Encourage play and creativity - Make space for fun and experimentation to build team cohesion
Invest in continuous learning - Allocate time and resources for ongoing growth

Conclusion

Jennifer Davis's approach to thriving through change centers on empowering individuals, measuring what truly matters, and creating supportive environments where teams can do their best work despite uncertainty. By embracing functional leadership principles, managing conflict effectively, connecting work to larger goals, and fostering continuous learning, leaders can help their teams not just weather change but use it as an opportunity for growth and innovation.

As Davis demonstrates through her own team's experience with significant organizational transformation, the right leadership approach can turn potential disruption into an opportunity for teams to become more resilient, autonomous, and effective.

"We have the power to enable teams to navigate change. We don't get to control all the changes... but we can empower our teams to thrive through them."

This blog post was inspired by Jennifer Davis's InfoQ presentation "Thriving through Change: Leading through Uncertainty". Jennifer Davis is an engineering manager at Google, author, and community builder focused on DevRel engineering.