Prioritizing Strategic Work as a Director of Engineering

Hosted by Allison Pollard and Paul Tevis

Wed, Mar 18, 2026

4:00 PM UTC (30 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

Free to join

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Transitioning to Managing Managers
Paul Tevis and Allison Pollard
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What you'll learn

Finding ways to stay in the “sweet spot” for your role

Recognizing how your org pulls you away from strategic work—and ways to get back into it

Letting your managers inside your head

Opening up your thought process—before you have the right answer—to help you and others do better thinking

Raising the bar on how your managers execute

Knowing what’s going on—and drawing your managers’ attention to the things they need to attend to

Why this topic matters

When you manage managers, you're a layer removed from the dev teams doing the work. It's hard not to jump in when things feel urgent. But your job is to look further ahead and make sure the org gets where it needs to be. Directors who learn to prioritize strategic work—even with constant pressure to do otherwise—spend less time firefighting and get trusted with bigger bets.

You'll learn from

Allison Pollard

Co-founder at Middlegame Partners

Allison Pollard co-founded Middlegame Partners to help technology leaders manage up, down, and across without the overwhelm. She has spoken at local DevOpsDays events and international conferences, leading sessions from small workshops to events with 1,000 people. After working with Allison, clients say they feel smarter and can finally see the path forward.

Allison has bachelor degrees in computer science, mathematics, and English from Southern Methodist University. For over ten years, she worked at a fast-growing consulting company with Fortune 500 clients in energy, retail, financial services, real estate, and transportation. Her work improved leadership-team dynamics while delivering business results like successful acquisitions, regulatory compliance, and faster time to market.

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Paul Tevis

Co-founder at Middlegame Partners

Paul Tevis is an executive coach, management trainer, and co-founder of Middlegame Partners. As a coach, he supports CEOs, COOs, CTOs, VPs, and Directors to achieve bottom-line results. As a trainer, he helps organizations develop new skills to solve pressing problems through interactive workshops and training. 

Paul began his career as a software engineer and engineering manager. He is also an experienced improviser and a member of the Applied Improvisation Network, a worldwide organization devoted to bringing the collaborative tenets of theatrical improvisation from the performance stage to the larger world.

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