Purpose.

I MENTOR / COACH ENGINEERING LEADERS TO grow and DO PRODUCT BETTER.

ENGINEERING LEADERS

Most demanded topics

Engineering Managers,
Team leaders

” With first-time leaders, my goal is to set you up for success in 3-6 months instead of letting you sink or swim for 2 years.

I evaluate your personality, potential and help you discover your principles.

Set me up for a new manager role! Raise my potential. Our company grows faster than myself.
How do I educate myself and outrun others? What engineering leadership sources/blogposts/podcasts are worth following?
What to focus on in the first three months in the team leader role? I want to ensure my team succeeds.
I'm lost in the priorities of my team. It's more of a firefight .
🤡 What is broken in my agility pipeline? Our ceremonies are a mess. We deliver half of sprints all the time.
There is no teamwork. Our team is a bunch of individuals.
I have an under-performer or a silent introvert in my team. What options do I have? How to involve them?
How to cooperate with your Product manager, Agile coach, and stakeholders.
How to communicate with your peers and your direct manager.
Help my identify my sweet spot and land my dream job. 🛬
Do I want to go the manager track or the senior technical track?
How do I conduct better 1️⃣:1️⃣'s?

Help me to plan roadmap initiatives for a successful 8️⃣0️⃣%+ roadmap delivery.
📐What are the right quality and success metrics? What's the best way to visualize and communicate them?
How to move my tribe from outputs to outcomes mindset? 🧘
How to resolve dependencies across multiple teams.
How to lead high-potential talents? 🤝
How to apply change management in our environment?
I communicate with your manager and the peers like a charm. 🎙️
Help me set up the delivery process end to end, including continuous discovery, delivery, and adoption. ⚙️
How to set up and evaluate performance goals so that people actually ❤️ the reviews?

Engineering directorS,
Tribe leaderS

” Allow me to help you to change your mindset. Move away from being busy/operational to thinking strategically , and scale your teams, while hitting delivery goals in parallel.

Given you now who you are, get better at how you work.

CTO,
Engineering VP

” You feel alone in your thoughts, squeezed between two stones. Executive management is asking you to hit the goals, while your teams are asking for help. You’re looking for an experienced person to validate and execute your ideas/improvements.

Execute your mission. Save quarters to years going left and right. I’ve experienced how a fine-tuned engineering ecosystem works. I know how it feels. I will guide you to reach that fragrance.

How do I define and measure success? Mission, product KPIs, quality and success metrics. 📺
How do we think about structuring teams as we continue to scale? Think verticals, Conway's law.
How to set up, execute, and evaluate the product / technical strategy? Aim to deliver +% of the roadmap all the time.
How do I make OKRs work in the company? Connect objectives up to tasks.
Help me create a solid hiring pipeline, including brand and community. 💂‍♀️
Moving away from a firefighting situation to a predictable environment ❓
How to set up agility mindset, succeed to hire agile coaches and establish your agile community 🚴
🚀 Help me to land the right career framework for my mission, company, structure and culture. Make people learn and grow.
How to execute performance reviews and calibrations?
💰How to allocate budget? Predictable payroll/non-payroll costs.

Engineering leader mentoring guide

An initial mentoring session is free of charge.

Each subsequent session has a clear outcome summarised at the end, with agreement on a principal follow-up action item for the mentee to progress towards their North star ⭐️

Location

On-site: Národní 135/14 110 00, 1, 110 00 Prague, Czech Republic.
Remote: video call.

How it works?

Rule no.1

You are hungry to grow. 🌳 If interest or progress is low, the lessons will be canceled. My aim is to help those who express a high level of motivation. Our time on Earth is expensive.

Rule no.2

All specific topics and personal issues are not be communicated outside of our sessions. What’s said between us, stays between us. 🙉

Rule no.3

We are well organised. We clearly define a top follow-up topic. We check the progress at the beginning of each session.

Scope

1️⃣ At the first session, we aim to get to know each other, understand the motivation, and draw a set of initial milestones on the timeline to ensure we'll be heading in the right direction.

2️⃣ The following sessions primarily tackle specific operational issues a mentee expects to cover.

3️⃣ After we pass 4-5 sessions, I tend to steer the focus towards our pre-agreed goals, moving away from operational to strategic thinking.

⬆️ Get even more inspiration from the most in-demand topics above. Though you must already have a good starting point since you've come to this page

Cadence

I recommend a one-hour weekly or bi-weekly frequency so that the mentee has enough time to digest the information and action a follow-up item.

After three months, we’ll debrief to review progress and provide feedback, optimally with your manager. We’ll take a momentary break to keep our to-do list from getting too long.

Marian helped me to stabilize and mature our engineering in Apify after a period of growth. In mentoring, we focused on many areas across product-engineering cooperation, career framework, team alignment, and agility. But mainly, he changed how I view my role and the role of the engineering department in the organization.

Marian was my mentor for 3 months and I’ve learned a lot from him – communication with my own team and stakeholders, managing improvement plan in the team, hiring of new people. Marian has experience from multiple scale up companies, growing from 30 to 100+ people and that’s experience he can pass on to engineering managers and engineering directors. What I’ve appreciated a lot is directness and honesty in mentoring, challenging my own beliefs of what is possible and at the same time being very human oriented. I would recommend Marian as a mentor to anybody who really wants to grow in managerial role as few hours per week I’ve invested are several months saved on the journey.

There is no other mentor like Marian. Each session, each talk we had was inspiring and full of practical recommendations. He helped me to switch thinking from what i want to do as engineer to what actually helps the product and the team. I started applying his recommendations and not only it starts to bring value to the product it feels so good. Thank you Marian.

More reviews/opinions >>

Our first talk is rather informal. Together, we’ll dive into:

1️⃣ Giving you all the details regarding how mentoring works,
2️⃣ You’ll explain the motivation and current situation,
3️⃣ We’ll check if we have a win-win.

The intro is free of charge as we need to validate the chemistry fit first.

If anything, I’d be delighted to get to know each other more and expand our network.

PS.: There are loads of people passively waiting 🙂

Why mentoring?

In an engineering leader’s context, I consider mentoring more valuable because it allows me to guide and develop the skills and knowledge of the engineering managers over a longer period of time. This can lead to more sustainable and effective improvements in the team’s performance, and help the engineers on the team become more effective and well-rounded leaders themselves.

Mentoring vs Coaching

I think beginning with mentoring and transitioning gradually to coaching after building mutual trust is advantageous for several reasons:

Establishing a trust foundation: By starting with mentoring, a solid trust foundation is formed between the mentor and the mentee. This initial mentoring phase ensures that the mentee feels supported, understood, and guided by an experienced individual.
Addressing pressing areas: The mentoring mode in the initial sessions enables us to focus on addressing immediate and pressing areas of concern for the mentee. This involves providing advice, sharing experiences, and offering solutions to specific challenges or problems.
Transfer of knowledge and skills: During the mentoring phase, the mentor can share their expertise, knowledge, and skills with the mentee. This knowledge transfer helps the mentee develop a stronger foundation and gain valuable insights that can be applied to their personal growth and development.
Establishing a personal connection: Through mentoring, a personal connection is established between the mentor and mentee. This connection enhances mutual understanding, empathy, and rapport, which are crucial for effective coaching.
Utilizing open-ended coaching questions: Once the pressing areas have been resolved and a sense of trust has been established, the transition to coaching becomes more effective. Coaching focuses on empowering the mentee to find their own solutions and make decisions through the use of open-ended questioning. This approach encourages critical thinking, self-reflection, and independent problem-solving skills.

By starting with mentoring and gradually shifting to coaching, we create a supportive and trusting environment where the mentee can benefit from guidance while also exploring their own capabilities. This approach facilitates a smoother transition into coaching, where the mentee takes on a more active role in their personal growth and development.