(In this SmartBits, Sudhir Patnaik outlines “Expectations of Senior Management“.  The video is at the end of this blog)

Leadership is key. But more than organization and people leadership owning a substantial part of work is also needed. One can have an oversight on some part of the organization, but need to get hands dirty by owning areas that have no managers. This keeps one grounded and also helps develop empathy for their organization as to what they go through.
Here are the expectations :
(1) The ability to understand what the team is going through.
(2) Show up in incidents, show up in incident reviews, show up in customer escalations
(3) Keep learning newer technologies and catch up with what’s going on in the industry
(4) Have the curiosity to look at everything from a metrics driven approach.

1. Be disciplined, but stay creative.
2. Ask questions, find answers. 
3. Be helpful, but don’t do others’ work.
4. Point out mistakes, don’t blame though.
5. Find bugs, help get them fixed too.
6. Communicate clearly, communicate crisply.
7. Do good work, showcase value. 
8. Do the mundane things, innovate constantly.
9. Stay doggedly steadfast, but be flexible.
10. Observe well, see things that are hidden.
11. Stay focussed, but have a 360 degree vision.
12. Have a system’s view, but know the internals.
13. Think like end user, while engineering solution.
14. Analyse like an engineer when working with end users.
15. Do what you must, automate everything else.
16. Document tersely, do voraciously.
17. Find what you must, prevent what you can.
18. Do less, accomplish more.
19. Engineer in code, to enable finding issues.
20. Have an user’s mind, engineer’s brain, eagle’s eyes and a businessman’s head. 
21. Read, observe, analyse, explore, experiment, prove, disprove- Actively seek out. 
22. Analyse quantitatively the engineering data, present qualitatively the business impact.
23. Strive for clarity, visualise the flow, spot anomalies in mind’s eye
24. Don’t settle, constantly churn and evolve, unsettle
25. Learn constantly, unlearn continually

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