Cultivating Leadership in Rapid Growth - The Sandbox Approach

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Cultivating Leadership in Rapid Growth: The Sandbox Approach

Background

In a recent project, our team tripled in size in a remarkably short period. While this rapid growth was a positive development, it also highlighted a shortage of ground-level leadership. Faced with this challenge, I had two options: recruit experienced leaders from the market or promote talent from within the team.

The first option posed significant challenges. Recruiting in the Japanese market can take up to six months, and integrating new hires with the existing team is another hurdle. On the other hand, promoting from within meant working with members who might not yet possess the required leadership skills.

We decided to take a creative approach and implement a sandbox leadership development program.

What is a Sandbox?

In a real-world context, a sandbox is a contained environment where children can play freely, build structures, and explore their creativity without constraints. This concept translates into our leadership development strategy, providing a safe space for emerging leaders to experiment, learn, and grow without the high stakes of their regular roles.

Sandbox Framework

Prerequisite - Key Activities

1. Identify Key Activities:
   • List essential activities for leaders, classified into two dimensions: technical skills and people management.
   • Categorize each activity by difficulty level: Easy, Medium, Advanced.
   • Define success criteria for each key activity.
   • Prepare an error budget for key performance indicators (KPIs).

   The Google SRE book defines error buget as “The error budget provides a clear, objective metric that determines how unreliable the service is allowed to be within a single quarter”.
   We adapted this concept to our project and defined it for our KPIs.

   Success criteria are the benchmarks that determine whether each activity managed by a team member meets its objectives and delivers the expected value. The judgment of experienced leaders plays a crucial role in this evaluation.

2. Preparation of Sandbox:
   • Establish sandbox boundaries using the identified key activities from both dimensions.
   • Create multiple sandbox sizes based on difficulty levels.
   • Determine the approximate playtime allocated to each sandbox.

Prerequisite - Identify People

1. Identify Potential Leaders:
   • Select junior members with leadership potential.
   • Choose mentors to guide these junior members.

Execution

1. Assign Sandboxes:
   • Ask junior members to take on their designated sandboxes and apply them to real work scenarios.
   • Provide realistic goals based on success criteria rather than detailed prescriptions.
   • Allow them to operate within their error budget, intervening only if the budget is exceeded.
2. Monitor and Evaluate:
   • Have junior members report their progress and evaluate them at regular intervals, such as weekly.
3. Celebrate Success:
   • When a junior member successfully completes a sandbox, celebrate the achievement.
   • Move on to a larger sandbox and repeat the process as necessary.

By fostering leadership from within, we were able to cultivate the necessary skills in our team members and ensure seamless integration. The sandbox approach not only developed effective leaders but also strengthened our team’s cohesion and adaptability.

Through this innovative method, we successfully navigated the challenges of rapid growth and emerged with a stronger, more capable leadership team.