May 29, 2020

165 | Growth & Evolution: What Got You Here Can’t Get You There: Leading Through Transition – with Andrea Goulet

You’ve done a lot of work to get yourself and your business to where you are today. You’ve learned new skills, implemented new systems, and started working with new people — but that’s not necessarily going to get you over the next hurdle.

Joining us to talk about what WILL get your organization over its next hurdle is Andrea Goulet, who is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Corgibytes and a prominent thought leader in the technology industry around three ideas: legacy code, communication, and empathy-driven development. Andrea is also the founder of LegacyCode.Rocks and the host of Legacy Code Rocks, a podcast dedicated to changing the way we think about legacy code.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

The Ship of Theseus & The Theseus Paradox

  • This is an old thought experiment: if you replace the head of an axe one month, then the handle of an axe the second month, is it still the same axe?
  • “We’ve really lionized this culture where the only thing that happens in innovation is something new, but there’s a lot of innovation in taking something that exists and transforming it.”

Why you need different kinds of engineers, thinkers, and communicators on your team.

  • Let’s zoom in on building products to illustrate this.
  • When you start building a product, you need to be rapidly prototyping and experimenting with new ideas.
  • But when you’re sustaining and growing a product, you need people who can get customer feedback, understand what they want out of the product, and then subtly transform the product without driving away users.
  • “It’s a 20th Century mindset to think that you create a product, it declines, and then you go and create another product. Instead, innovation happens in the transformation.”
  • You can’t build a sustainable software business without both kinds of thinkers and builders, as well as people on your team who are able to communicate the users’ needs to and with them.

Resources:

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

About The Innovation Engine

Since 2014, 3Pillar has published The Innovation Engine, a podcast that sees a wide range of innovation experts come on to discuss topics that include technology, leadership, and company culture. You can download and subscribe to The Innovation Engine on Apple Podcasts. You can also tune in via the podcast’s home on Spotify to listen online, via Android or iOS, or on any device supporting a mobile browser.