Leadership - Scaling Engineering Team From 3 to 40

Project management looks clean on paper. Gantt charts, milestones, KPIs, risk matrices. Automotive project management looks similar, until you actually do one. In general terms, project management skills are well known, scope definition, planning, communication, risk management, stakeholder alignment, and execution discipline. These are universal and transferable across industries. Enough pages where written about that to circle the earth. Automotive project management si similar, but it doesn’t forgive shallow understanding and it amplifies every weakness. Automotive projects live at the intersection of hardware, software, regulation, and long-term liability . A delay is not just a delay, it can mean missing a model year. A design flaw isn’t a patch, it’s a millions of US Dollars recall. Decisions made early echo for a decade. What does that mean for a project manager? First, process literacy is non-negotiable . ASPICE, ISO 26262, PPAP, SOTIF, these aren’t buzzwords. They shape ho...

Leadership is one of those words everyone uses, few define clearly, and almost nobody agrees on. Over the years, I’ve seen leadership described as vision, authority, inspiration, decisiveness, empathy, courage, or simply “getting things done through people.” The truth is uncomfortable: leadership is all of these, depending on the moment, and sometimes none of them when you least expect it. At its core, leadership is not a role. It’s not a title on a business card or a box in an org chart. Leadership is a relationship. It exists only when other people choose, consciously or not, to follow your direction, trust your judgment, or rely on your decisions. What makes someone a leader in general? Three things stand out consistently. First, clarity . People don’t follow perfection, they follow clarity. A leader doesn’t need all the answers, but must be able to articulate where we’re going, why it matters, and what “good” looks like. In uncertain environments, clarity is calming. It gives pe...