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How a Non Technical Founder Can Make Technical Decisions
After a conversation with a friend who was struggling with making technical decisions as a non technical founder, here are my take aways on the conversation.
Lundin Matthews
June 08, 2023
The Why?
I was having a conversation today with a friend who runs a company and the conversation turned to how can a non technical founder make technical decisions or know that the solutions developers are proposing are going to enable the company to ship features faster or that its the right path forward. This lead me to reflect a bit but also think about my own process and tell her what how I work to enable employees to help make key decisions.
The Problem
Developers come to you as a non technical founder and say “I think we should migrate our system to a micro service”. You as the non technical founder say sounds like a plan go do it, one reason you do this is your not sure of the technical questions to ask, and your unsure how to start the conversation. Meaning that sometimes decisions get made that you approved that you actually have no idea the potential impact it will have long term for you.
The Process
Try this process instead, the developer comes to you and says “I think we should migrate our system to a micro service” and you respond with “That sounds like an interesting idea, can you spend tomorrow putting together alternatives to a micro service system and the benefits they might have?”
What you just did as a non technical founder was forced your developer to go do the research for you, now he might not come back with the most meaningful data but thats not the point. What you have done is gotten the developer to put together some alternatives and now you can have a conversation with that developer when they come back to you tomorrow.
Once you have this information and alternatives you can do your own research based on the data that your developer put together for you, this empowers you to get the information you need to make decisions.
The Why
As a business owner your goal should be to empower employees to be the most successful versions of themselves while not having to become an expert yourself. By using the above process the employee does enough research that they allow you to have a much more meaningful conversation on the topic and you can empower the employee to understand what information is needed in order to make decisions at an executive level.
You can use this type of questioning in any part of your life, see you don’t have to be an expert on subjects but you do have to be an expert on finding a way to get enough information that you can have a intelligent conversation, don’t let the fear of not knowing stop you from growing or making hard choices.
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