How to Always Get Invited to Big Strategic Conversations

Ever heard “you’re a great engineer/manager, but to get to the next level, you need to focus on the big picture and your business impact”? Early on in our careers, we focus on technical depth and excellence. Yet for most of us, our career stalls around limited opportunities to demonstrate strategic thinking and business impact, not a lack of technical depth.

This talk will focus on practical strategies and examples for getting invited to the big conversations where strategic decisions are made and projects are assigned. You’ll learn how to be the default choice across the company to represent engineering on specific topics, how to demonstrate you’re capable of taking the next step in your career when it isn’t technical skill holding you back and how to share these skills with others to build a strong product-focused company. 

Key takeaways:

  • How to identify topics of high strategic importance your peers and team aren’t aware of.
  • How to become recognised as a topic expert within the business on non-technical and partially technical things.
  • How to make sure when you do get in the room, you’re invited back a second time. And then are chosen to lead the projects and teams you really want to lead.
     

Speaker

Mark Allen

Engineering Leader and Technical Co-Founder, Over 10 Years Experience Growing Managers and Senior Engineers

Mark Allen is Head of Engineering at Isometric, one of the UK's fastest growing climate tech companies. Previously, he was co-founder of VC-backed startup Ourspace; led an 80 person tech division at Spanish unicorn Glovo; and led Destination Advertising Engineering at Skyscanner. In each role, he's been continually asked to lead business critical projects, both inside and beyond engineering, and has grown multiple Engineering Managers to Directors; Senior Engineers to Staff and Staff Engineers to Principal. 

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