This post has been long pending — it’s been sitting in draft for four months now. One of those blogs I write on the flight back from a sprint with the team. The team has grown a lot and is even more diverse. And on the journey back, as always, I found myself reflecting on how the Glific team and Tech4Dev as an organisation have evolved, especially through the growth of its people. We still have a long way to go, but I’ve seen significant step-change improvements — from those just starting out to program leads to the most senior folks on the team.
Two years after setting our Values, how are we actually doing at practising them? This blog is primarily a reflection on myself — but in some of the observations, others might see themselves too. (Disclaimer: any resemblance to real persons is entirely intentional.)
Our Values: Social Sector Focus · Openness · Trust · Collaboration · Excellence · Innovation
Everyone Is a Leader
I hate using the word ‘leader’ only for those who manage teams, while labelling individual contributors, new hires, or people early in their careers as something else. What was embedded in me through a decade at Amazon was this: if you take Ownership, Insist on High Standards, Think Big while listening to your team, Are Right A Lot, Develop the best around you, Have Backbone to Disagree and Commit, and Deliver Results — all while Earning Trust — then you are a Leader. Anyone can do this. Not just “senior people,” “executives,” or “heads of programs.” Not only senior people practised them, everyone was expected to.
I see so much of this thinking at Tech4Dev. Our six values aren’t a poster on the wall — they’re meant to be the operating system everyone runs on, at every level. When someone takes ownership of a problem, asks hard questions in a meeting, or pushes back on a bad idea — that’s leadership, regardless of where they sit in the org. I often use the analogy of owning your work as if you were the founder — as if it were your baby. When someone feels that kind of passion in what they do, great things happen.
And one of the most important jobs of a senior member in this org is to create the conditions for that to happen — and to not get in the way of it.
Which brings me to the harder part.
Trust — Autonomy and Accountability
There is still a lot of room for growth across T4D — myself included. Senior leaders have definitely started letting go more, giving people the space to make mistakes and learn from them. But letting go is only half of it. The other half is sharing the vision — clearly and consistently — so people know what they’re running towards. As we evolve from T4D 2.0 to 3.0, the whole team needs to see where we’re headed, not just the most senior members.
At Amazon, I saw how well senior members kept a pulse on the teams that rolled into them while still giving those teams the autonomy to grow. Whenever I look back on a decision I’ve gotten wrong, I reflect on what someone I hold in high regard would have done differently. It almost always comes down to two things: accountability and communication — on my part.
Managers at any level are partners of their teams — not mentors, not ringmasters, not bosses. Partners. In most cases, the person closest to the work knows more about it than anyone senior to them. If you’re the smartest person in the room and you lead a team, it’s time to either hire smarter people or consider moving into an IC role where you can contribute more directly. Build a team that pushes back, or at least has a point of view. If people around you keep conceding their positions too easily, reflect on how you’re communicating. Are you actually listening?
I sometimes skip levels and inadvertently do what I tell others not to. But I’m grateful to the people in my team who keep me on track and remind me to trust them more. When I find myself contributing hands-on to an initiative, I try to operate as if I’m reporting to the owner of that work — even if they normally report to me. It’s a tricky discipline, but essential for maintaining trust.
There’s a cultural layer here too. In India, age and respect go hand-in-hand — the culture embeds that early. Speaking up, questioning hierarchy, asking your senior to reconsider something can all feel like insubordination. Thankfully, Tech4Dev is mostly above this, but I have to remind the team and myself again and again to break out of that line of thinking. Senior members can be intimidating even when they don’t mean to be. When I only hear “agreed” in a room, I know there’s more to it — the instinct should be to dig deeper, not to take the nod as validation.
Building shared goals and KPIs with managers, keeping them part of the conversation — this is something I’m actively working on this year to maintain accountability and visibility within the team. The clearest signal that trust is working is when you aren’t needed in the room as often as you used to be.
Collaboration — Communication and Focus
Trust, though, doesn’t mean going dark. Especially for virtual teams, face time is essential. Anyone who says otherwise is likely operating as an individualist rather than a team player. When I joined Tech4Dev, Lobo spoke about reducing meeting time — and it’s still a rule of thumb for me, since I’m a stickler about time. But I’ve also learned that for virtual teams, some meetings are glue. If you don’t get face time, you won’t realise until it’s too late that the bread you asked for and the bread being baked are completely different.
Working in silos is like flying solo — there will be conflict and realignment the moment you’re ready to land your deliverable. (Apologies for the analogies.) I’ve seen this play out multiple times: I’ve trimmed sync-ups on an initiative or asked people to drop off calls to save time — and then context was lost or misread, and what got built was off the mark.
But the harder version of this problem isn’t when you exclude people from meetings or try to get frugal with time. It’s when you’re (I’m) actually in the room.
Do No Harm
In reflection, I’ve noticed that when I jump to suggesting solutions, I do more harm than good. Not because I’m bad at problem-solving — though some might disagree — but because I’m often not close enough to the ground to have the full picture, and I carry blind spots. If I spell out a solution, the team takes it as the default. “Radhika said so” ends the conversation before it begins. And just like that, the very leadership I want everyone to practise gets quietly handed back to the senior member in the room.
Our job as managers isn’t to have the answer. It’s to ask the question that helps the team find it — and then get out of the way. It takes real restraint, and it’s something I’m still working on.
When I pose a question that gets everyone wondering, it sparks excitement and prototyping. But a few weeks later, I see the disruption that single question caused. What I said in passing — became work the team started prioritising by stretching themselves, entirely outside the roadmap. A throwaway thought from me became someone else’s late nights.
This is a clear signal that the team is still building the muscle of saying no, and of asking “why now?” or “by when?” — something every team member needs to internalise, regardless of tenure. Work-life balance has come up in retros quarter after quarter, yet concerns about low velocity keep surfacing. A good part of this is a loop we create ourselves: senior members throw in questions and challenges that stir the pot, shift focus, and pull the team away from planned work. Prioritisation goes sideways, estimation takes a hit — and then we wonder why velocity looks the way it does.
The team does need to get better at planning and estimating — that’s real. But the flip side is equally on us: understanding what the team is actually capable of, what they’re carrying, and what their bandwidth is. I look forward to every team member — at any level — getting into the habit of asking: where does this new piece of work sit in my priorities, and when is it actually needed? Recency bias affects everyone, but it tends to get triggered from the top and land hardest at the bottom.
Wrapping this up four months after the flight it was started on, the lessons feel just as relevant — if not more so. “Do No Harm” isn’t about being passive or stepping back entirely. It’s about being deliberate — in how we trust, how we collaborate, and especially in how we intervene. The best thing a senior member can often do for their team is also the hardest: hold back the answer, ask the question, and let the team find their way. Because when we do that consistently, something shifts — people stop looking up for the answer and start looking at each other. That’s when real leadership starts to grow, at every level of the org. Building that culture — where ownership is shared widely, practised daily, and not concentrated at the top — is what T4D 3.0 looks like to me.
