TLC #4: Being a Multiplier, Apple abandons EV, Alibaba EMO and more
Being a multiplier is critical to be a successful tech leader. And Apple, Alibaba, Microsoft, Uber are all in the news this week. (Issue #4, 05 Mar 2024)
Hey, Ashwin here! Welcome to edition #4 of the Tech Lead Compass newsletter!
In this edition let’s talk about the importance of tech leaders being multipliers in their organization and outside.
Who is a Multiplier and Why you should become one?
In her best-selling book Multipliers, Liz Wiseman discusses two types of leaders.
Type #1 leaders are multipliers who use their intelligence and skills to empower everyone around them.
Type #2 leaders are diminishers who treat their intelligence as a unique trait and are fearful of enabling others.
Here’s a short video from her that’s worth a watch.
As a tech leader, here are some pragmatic ways to become more of a multiplier at work and in life.
Identify talent and put them in front of the right opportunities, help them to succeed
Remove any obstacles (especially from diminishers) that these talented folks may encounter
Realize that people can’t be forced to bring out their best. They must choose to do so. Provide them with everything that is needed to be at their best!
Challenge people constructively. Believe everyone can succeed given the right resources and support
Promote a culture of constructive debate. Trust that good decisions are made through such debates in a psychologically safe environment
Believe that talented folks can be independent and micromanagement is detrimental
Grow people’s intelligence by sharing your knowledge and learning
In short, enabling others to succeed is a tech leader’s true success metric.
Now on to the must-read news from the past week…
5 “Must-Read” Tech News for the Week
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi on doing business in India (The Economic Times)
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi remarked that India is one of the most challenging markets due to the high demand for services but reluctance to spend much money
Apple shuts down its electric car project (ArsTechnica)
After ten years of development, Apple has reportedly ended work on its electric car project known as Project Titan. Expected profit margin is said to be the reason and employees are expected to take up Generative AI work or let go.
After a successful run with internal finance teams, Microsoft is rolling out Copilot AI chatbot to Excel and Outlook. Though the claim is to simplify complex tasks like reconciling data across multiple systems, the fear of it replacing some existing people will surface sooner or later.
Researchers at Alibaba have developed an AI system called “EMO” (Emote Portrait Alive) that can animate a single portrait photo and generate realistic videos of the person talking or singing. Unlike traditional methods that rely on 3D face models, EMO directly converts audio waveforms into video frames.
GitHub Copilot with an enterprise flavor that claims to use your organization’s knowledge and codebase to generate the best code is now generally available.
That’s it for this week. Until we meet next week, stay safe and have fun with tech.
In case you missed the past articles, feel free to read them from here:
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