Ever noticed how a company starts to resemble the department that’s running the show? In a perfect world, corporate strategy balances the needs of all departments, but often one department winds up taking center stage. As a leader, it’s crucial to recognize which department holds the power and influence, and how you should adjust. Are you currently tuning into the right signals, or just seeing things through your own department’s lens?

Keeping up with which department is making the decisions is critical because it affects everything from strategy to culture. This rarely stays static, because different departments might take charge at different times throughout a company’s history. These shifts might happen because of big leadership changes, advancements (or regressions!) in company maturity, competition, tech innovation, or economic booms and busts. For instance, in a booming economy, a company might prioritize aggressive sales tactics to seize more market share, but during a downturn, finance might step in to tighten budgets to create stability.

Once you’ve identified which departmental philosophy is being prioritized, you can adjust your engineering strategies to stay aligned with company goals so your team’s work has the greatest impact. But what does it look like when each department comes to the fore, when does it work well (or poorly), and what should you prioritize within engineering? Let’s start with our own department…

Engineering

Engineering-focused companies put a lot of effort into making top-notch products and coming up with cool new ideas. They’re all about building strong, top-quality stuff and are usually at the forefront when it comes to using advanced engineering practices. They shine in places that need the latest technology and the best engineering solutions. But sometimes they can have a hard time reacting fast to customers’ feedback or changes in the market. Their emphasis on the nitty-gritty technical details might mean they miss out on bigger picture strategies.

Example Companies: Google, Netflix

In this kind of company, drive technical excellence and keep the innovation flowing. Push best practices in software development and foster top-notch quality. Encourage your team to experiment and take risks, but also keep an eye on making sure everything’s feasible and scalable. Regularly communicate how these innovations line up with business goals and customer needs.

Sales

In sales-led companies, the main goals are reaching revenue targets and grabbing more of the market. These businesses move fast, keep up with market changes, and thrive in new or tough markets where it’s all about quick wins and ambitious growth strategies. But they can have a hard time with long-term planning and coming up with new products because they’re concentrating on making sales right away. If they fall behind on product quality and innovation, customer satisfaction might take a hit.

Example Companies: Salesforce, Oracle

To do well in this environment, roll out features that help quickly hit the sales targets, and build the system to scale quickly to handle more demand. Keep in close contact with the sales team to understand evolving customer needs and tweak your engineering priorities accordingly.

Marketing

Marketing-driven companies are all about making a splash, creating hype to get people excited, and standing out in the market. These companies shine in industries where customer perception and having a unique brand is important. However, they might have difficulty keeping up with the technical side or being efficient if they’re over-emphasizing marketing and not investing enough in product innovation or quality.

Example Companies: Coca-Cola, Nike

In this case, create flexible teams that can quickly react to marketing tests and campaigns with frequent product launches and updates. It’s important to release user-friendly features that amp up customer engagement and experience. Work closely with marketing so that promotional promises match the timeline for delivering what the product can actually do.

Product

Product-led companies create products that captivate users and dominate the market. They put customers at the center and consistently improve their products based on what users say. This enables them to build a solid base and grab a strong position in the market. Sometimes, though, they might find it tricky to balance cool new stuff with keeping costs down and deciding how to handle sales and marketing.

Example Companies: Apple, Tesla

Here, you should build strong relationships with your product managers and sync your engineering efforts with the product vision and demands of the market. Foster solid testing and feedback loops to keep users happy with quality products that meet their needs.

Customer Success

Customer success-focused companies want their customers to be happy and stick around for the long haul. They pour a lot of resources into supporting customers after the sale and building strong relationships so that they can cross-sell and up-sell to expand revenue. This approach can also make it more challenging for the company to rapidly innovate and bring in new customers because they’re prioritizing keeping the existing customers happy.

Example Companies: HubSpot, Zendesk

In this type of company, your teams need to be highly responsive to customer feedback and quick to implement changes before satisfaction numbers start to drop. Paying attention to reliability, ease of use, and customer-requested features will keep customers happy and loyal.

Finance

Finance-driven companies are all about the numbers: they’re obsessed with making sure everything runs smoothly, cutting costs, and keeping the cash flow strong. They’re great at keeping things profitable in industries where being careful with money is important, like mature businesses, low-margin sectors, and those that need a lot of capital. But sometimes, being laser-focused on the money can cause the company to miss out on higher risk opportunities, stifle innovation, or be slower to adapt to market changes.

Example Companies: Lockheed Martin, Berkshire Hathaway

In this situation, direct your efforts towards financial discipline and being transparent. Put strict budgeting and cost controls in place for engineering projects and use data-driven decisions. Your aim is to make the best use of resources and get the most ROI. Find small ways to keep innovative projects going so you can drive future growth.

Compliance and Legal

While not quite as common, Compliance and Legal-led companies care most about regulatory adherence and data protection. They do well in heavily regulated, risk averse industries such as finance, insurance, healthcare, and government. A strong focus on compliance can slow down innovation and responsiveness to market trends, which might also affect the user experience.

Example Companies: Blue Cross Blue Shield, State Farm Insurance

If you work in one of these organizations, make security and compliance top priorities in all your development processes and keep your products within regulatory requirements. Team up with the security and compliance folks to integrate best practices, maintain high data protection standards, and stay on top of regulatory changes.

꧁༺ ༻꧂

Understanding what makes your company strategy tick is crucial context. Whether it’s engineering, sales, marketing, product, customer success, finance, or compliance and legal, customizing your approach ensures that your team’s work is impactful and in tune with the company’s big-picture goals. If you take a moment to think about these driving forces to assess your organization’s position, what’s the best way you can help your team drive long-term success? What strengths can you harness, and what growth areas should you and your team focus on next?