Principles, Not Directives

To inspire innovation requires giving teams freedom to explore

DEV.BIZ.OPS
8 min readMar 10, 2022

While this is supposed to be a weekly publication, some weeks are just too busy to sit down and write. Such was the case with my trip to Singapore last week. First, it was just a week, so three days are already lost in a haze of jetlag. Then, because it is just a week, I was packing in the meetings.

Me taking selfies in the AWS Singapore office
Me taking selfies in the AWS Singapore office

I would show you my calendar for that week, but it would be a sea of blue blocks one after the other. I normally advise people not to do this and to purposefully schedule in think time during the week. In this instance though, I felt I had to make up for two years lost to COVID and not connecting with my network in Singapore. The consequences of such a hectic agenda was sore feet, no time to write, and crashing in my bed before 10 pm every night.

I am not complaining though. I felt fortunate to even have a week available to spend time with so many awesome people in the Singapore tech community. Some were old friends and some were new faces. I sat down with founders, IT leaders, investors, and influencers. The incredible diversity of people, backgrounds, and ideas made for an informative and inspiring week.

I tend to find my most rewarding and enriching meetings happen over meals. There is a phrase called “breaking bread”…

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DEV.BIZ.OPS
DEV.BIZ.OPS

Written by DEV.BIZ.OPS

Thoughts on developers, digital transformation, startups, community building & engineering culture. Author is Mark Birch @ AWS 👉 https://twitter.com/marksbirch