It’s one thing to be great at something, and it’s another thing to help lead, support, and coach others to become great at it. When we hire (which we’re doing now) we’re looking for someone with the experience of the former, and the steady, authentic, magic touch for the latter.

We’re looking for people who are not only comfortable but invigorated by doing things a little differently. Not for the sake of being out of the box, but in response to the reality that the most common approach to technology is a pretty surefire road to disappointment. So doing things differently actually makes pretty good sense.

Conceptually the work is simple. Create, empower, and protect a team of people who naturally approach technology work with a ‘user alliance’ approach. Find people who are naturally driven to partner with colleagues, to strategically understand their work and their challenges, and then set up the technology beautifully to solve those problems. Get the right people in the right roles and the right structures and watch good things happen.

But in practice, this work is complicated. It’s people work, and people are complicated. It’s structural work, and structures are complicated. It’s theoretical work, and implementing the theoretical in the real world is complicated. It’s change and growth work, and change and growth are hard.

To do this role well, our approach has to intuitively click from your own experience. You probably need to have done this kind of technology work yourself from one angle or another, and you probably need battle scars that help you understand why this approach is so important and so differentiated from the norm.

But you also have to have a certain magic that makes you the right kind of guide, coach, friend, mentor, and strategist. You find a complex strategic landscape to be an interesting challenge to be understood and grappled with. You have a steadiness and authenticity to the way you approach conversations and interactions. You build trust that is well earned and based on real experience and insight. You’re more motivated by solving problems for people than you are by covering your rear by checking off a list of requirements. You appreciate the value of taking time to reflect on how things worked or didn’t work last time and how to improve them for next time.

You have the ability to be flexible enough to incorporate new information that may challenge what you believed yesterday, as well as the ability to articulate your clear reasons for holding the line when the time is right. You can learn to lean into being an expert rather than an order taker, but with the depth of humility needed to respect the sheer complexity of the realities of the work, and the intelligence and capacity of everyone you interact with.

Some people just have this magic at some essential level, along with the depth of experience to understand the work, the magic to help bring out the best in others, and the appetite to continually evolve and grow. They may not even see themselves as having this set of nuanced skills, but when you see it in action it's easy to recognize.

That’s what we’re looking for.