Technical excellence wasn’t enough to build a company

For a long time I believed that if I became excellent at the technical work, a successful technology business would follow. My background was software quality, performance engineering and test automation. I understood the work, I cared about doing it well, and I had seen a good technical decision change the course of an engagement.

Building EhsanLab showed me how much that view left out. Technical skill still mattered, but it didn’t bring in customers. It didn’t give us a sales process, develop managers, or help the team make decisions without waiting for me.

A different kind of problem

As a practitioner, I could usually improve an outcome by digging deeper into the technical problem and doing the work better. As a founder, that habit worked less often. Some problems needed clearer ownership. Others needed a better conversation with a customer, a different hire, or a decision to stop offering something.

Working harder myself could rescue one engagement and leave the company problem exactly where it was. If every difficult decision came back to me, we hadn’t yet built the ability to make it anywhere else.

The question I ask now

These days I spend more time on a different question: what has to exist for this company to do excellent work consistently? Technical capability is part of the answer. So are customer trust, sales, mentoring, delivery systems, financial judgment and people who take responsibility.

Delegation is where I feel this most. Handing someone a task is the easy part. They also need enough context to make decisions, the skills to deliver, and a clear sense of when to ask for help. Building that takes work from me too.

Still in the middle of it

My technical experience is still the foundation I work from. What I’m learning is how to connect it to the rest of a business that has to run well when I’m not in the room.

I’m still building my understanding of sales, marketing and how organizations grow. What has changed so far is where I look first. Before asking how to do something well, I now ask whether we should do it at all, who should own it, and whether the company can keep doing it.