Navigating complex stakeholders, competing interests & gaining buy-in w/ Pete Peterson #154

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

Pete Peterson, CTO @ Riviera Partners, joins our podcast to discuss strategies for gaining stakeholder buy-in in complex stakeholder environments. He shares his experience working as the CIO for the City of Oakland & how he navigated implementing change across 30+ departments & stakeholders. We cover how to find collaborators who share your vision, why quick wins are important for gaining stakeholder buy-in, balancing competing interests from stakeholders, introducing change to your tech team when there’s resistance, and more. Pete also shares his favorite leadership practices & tips for eng leaders who are presenting to stakeholders.

ABOUT PETE PETERSON

Andrew (Pete) Peterson is the Chief Technology Officer of Riviera Partners, a leading executive search firm for engineering, product, and design leadership roles. With over 30 years of experience in cloud/SaaS platform and solution development, Peterson oversees Riviera's technology vision, direction, and development by leading the engineering, product, and data science teams. Prior to Riviera Partners, Pete served as the Chief Information Technology Officer for the City of Oakland and held various leadership roles in technology and operations at Up Communications, Xtiva Financial Systems, and CallidusCloud Software. Pete holds an M.B.A. from the University of San Francisco and a B.S. in Computer Science from Purdue University.

"You have 30, 40 different fiefdoms. Everyone's doing whatever they want to do to a degree. How do you convince these 30 different directors or whatever that we do have common objectives? We do have some things in common. There are places where we can collaborate. There are places where we can have sort of economies of scale if we pool all of our resources together and we can all benefit from these things.”

- Pete Peterson

We’re hosting the first ELC Annual Watch Party on 11/8!

We’re livestreaming the most popular sessions from the ELC Annual 2023 conference + hosting virtual roundtable discussions to connect you with eng leaders around the globe AND in your city.

Our first topic covers Generative AI & engineering leadership with Wade Chambers… no this isn’t about the tech - it’s about the leadership skills and competencies you need to evolve and adapt to lead in this next generation!

We have different events for Europe, East Coast & West Coast! To RSVP, find your location HERE:

Europe

West Coast & MidWest

East Coast

SHOW NOTES:

• Pete’s experience as CIO for the City of Oakland (3:19)
• Lessons learned in this CIO role & how it differed from traditional tech roles (7:08)
• Navigating a complex stakeholder environment from a technology perspective (9:15)
• Finding collaborators with a shared sense of vision (10:54)
• Why a quick win & great results can make later conversations easier (13:10)
• How past work w/ stakeholders impacted Pete’s current initiatives @ Riviera (15:13)
• Tips for balancing different / competing interests from stakeholders (21:27)
• Tapping into stakeholders’ motivations to create a unified front (25:17)
• How to bring your team along when there’s resistance to change (29:09)
• Breaking down Pete’s two main leadership practices (34:49)
• Pete’s favorite tips for eng leaders presenting to various stakeholders (38:13)
• Rapid fire questions (40:50)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• The Wisdom Of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return -Mihir Desai’s lucid exploration of the ideas of finance as seen through the unusual prism of the humanities. Through this novel, creative approach, Desai shows that outsiders can access the underlying ideas easily and insiders can reacquaint themselves with the core humanity of their profession.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/