If you’re a modern business of any kind, you are likely to be tech-enabled. Even if you’re not developing the latest GPU or working on the bleeding edge of AI, software is going to be instrumental in determining the success and scale of your business. So it pays (literally) to understand what software engineering entails, and what building technology means.
Fundamentally, the more uncertainty, and better your software, the more valuable your company will be.
Most people find uncertainty uncomfortable. We do what we can to minimise it—planning for the future, choosing the safe option, and staying in the known and the familiar whenever we can.
The problem is, uncertainty is where the gold lies. Literally, and metaphorically.
Where there’s uncertainty, there is possibility. And where there is possibility, there is potential to create value, and the status and wealth that creating value inevitably results in.
How does software into this? If your deployment cycles are weekly or daily, rather than on demand; if your systems are coupled and hard to change without things breaking or needing lots of manual testing; if your teams are either at loggerheads or avoiding the difficult but fruitful conversations required; if any of these are true, you’re simply not going to be able to move nimbly enough to grasp the potential waiting in that field of uncertainty.
So lean into the uncertainty. Feel the discomfort, get to the point you want to stop. Now go that little bit further. You’ll be amazed at what comes next.