Truthfully — the biggest thing has been leaning into my gut more as opposed to trying to reason through everything thoroughly. The decisions are many and the time is short. Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” is a great read, and when working in engineering management, the conclusion to be drawn from it is that your gut (aka system 1) is actually really good at summing all of your past experience and telling you what you should do. There is definitely more in the domain of human psychology that I have studied as well.

In addition, I’ve been forced to continue to hone my technical skills, but more in the domain of “why” instead of “how”. I was able to be an effective engineer by mastering the “how” (which of course required some non-zero knowledge of “why”). However, the types of minds that exist in engineering (or at least the types I want on my team), are not satisfied with a boss telling them “how” to do something. The reasoning must be sound. Engineers want to see the work. If you can’t provide compelling arguments for why a new policy or decision exists, then you quickly lose credibility.