Leader Bio - Afiya Chohollo

“It's a multi-domain expertise group. You've got TPM, you've got test, you've got DevOps, you’ve got SRE, and you've got software engineering.”

Managing a large, technically diverse team containing multiple skillsets often takes senior engineers way beyond their comfort zone. Not only is the management challenge exponentially greater, but it positions them as managers of people who do jobs they've never done before ourselves.

Afiya Chohollo - VP of Engineering and Technical Program Management at Onfido - oversees a diverse group of around 55 engineers. Her role demands a mind-boggling range of technical knowledge across these disparate engineering disciplines, and the ability not just to manage individuals effectively one-on-one, but to co-ordinate the moving parts of multiple product teams as they work towards their shared goals.

At face value, it sounds almost impossibly complex. However, Afiya’s approach makes it all sound simple. Her ability to work across these different disciplines, and zoom her managerial lens seamlessly in and out from the individual to the organisational level, hinges on a few simple ingredients: her aptitude and affinity for spotting patterns and solving problems; her own self-identity as a generalist; and her understanding of her end users.

All of these skills, for Afiya, are rooted in learning and, especially, her scientific education.

Material benefits

Afiya studied Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Manchester, a choice she made because of the tangible results the field offered.

“I was really interested in the applied nature of engineering in general. If it became too theoretical - theoretical physics, theoretical chemistry, whatever it was - I didn’t really connect as well as when it was either improving the strength of something. Or reducing the latency. Or anything where I could actually see the problem I was solving.”

This outlook manifested quickly on her entry to the workplace. In her first position following graduation, for Morgan Advanced Materials, Afiya was tasked with implementing new software on the factory floor.

“The first task I was given was just, ‘Deploy the software.’ It had been something the company had been sitting on for a couple of years. I went to the factory floor, looked at what was happening and spoke to the operators.”

It soon dawned on Afiya that following the brief would just replicate the same results that were already being achieved. “I realised, ‘We’ll have exactly the same thing, just a little bit more shiny.’”

The real challenge that needed solving was getting faster feedback and data in real-time for the manufacturing process. In manufacturing processes like those Afiya was working on, there are countless variables that can impact the end result. Defects can ruin batch production, especially if not spotted until the end of a weeks-long process.

“So I implemented things like statistical process control with this software. And looking at the upper and lower bounds and seeing where the anomalies are. Where is normal variation? Where are things that are outside of that bounds?”

Not only did Afiya’s approach improve the metrics that were being monitored, but it put the ability to measure them in the hands of the operatives of the process itself.

Problems and patterns

This was Afiya’s first foray into problem-solving using software, and she caught the bug. From Morgan, her career then led her to a Technology Portfolio Program Manager position with Tesco, before she joined her current company, Onfido.

Throughout, her scientific approach to problem-solving was Afiya’s trump card. Having spent her studies asking focused questions about how to improve the properties of particular materials, she has found herself naturally adept at focusing on the specifics of the problem at hand in software issues.

“Framing the problem, and defining the problem, goes such a long way to actually solving it.

“When you come up with a system design, it starts from ‘What are the things that we have to address? What does the system not do today that we need it to do?’ That then gives you quite a specific solution to build.”

As well as framing, Afiya credits her education for teaching her that scientific approaches can be used to identify and solve almost any problem.

She gives the example of a technical Lead who was on-call when Afiya was overseeing a bug fix.

“’They said, ‘This is not my area.’ And I said, ‘That's okay. We're actually here to root cause this, which anyone can do. Anyone can figure out what the problem is. It might take a genius to solve it, but we can definitely figure out the problem.’”

Afiya’s approach to problem-solving revolves around patterns, both in terms of those observed when identifying and framing problems, and in the approach that is taken to solving them.

“There are usually patterns, after you've defined the problem, of things that you actually need to do. If you've got a messaging problem, there are only really a few protocols that work well for that. If you've got a latency issue, then there are things that you can do to improve. There's usually only a few things that you need to do to solve a particular challenge.”

Longer term, Afiya’s desire to solve problems means she sees herself, one day, founding her own business.

“I thought that, to be a founder, you had to have this idea that you’ve had since you were four, and just naturally wanted to be a founder. I think I’ve come at it a different way: I actually like solving problems. I don’t think it’s just wanting to be a founder or an entrepreneur. It’s not that I want to be my own boss. It’s the idea of the problem space.”

Generalism

Afiya didn’t plan on becoming a people leader until it happened. As a team of technical program managers started to grow around her, Afiya came to realise that she had a level of responsibility towards them.

“We didn’t have a career ladder for TPMs. We didn’t have salary bands. I had to make sure that if you join this team, you had a career. I was now responsible for other people’s careers.”

Her problem-solving instincts continue to guide her approach to people management, as with technical questions.

“I was privileged and lucky enough to have a coach. She made me sit and decide, ‘What does that group need from you? What are the things or the problems to solve?’ So like in a system, what are the bits of that system that don’t work, or aren’t working? And for some parts of it, it will be different. It might be, ‘Okay, here it's upload. Here, it's speed.’ Whatever it is. It was very different for each group.

“I could immediately say, ‘Okay, for that group, I actually don't need to worry about recruiting. There is no open headcount. The thing that I need to solve here is conflict. This group, it's the head count. We need to staff everyone. We need to focus on that. For the other group, it might be career progression; there's no career ladder. So I need to do the career ladder.’ And so I was able to see what each group needed from me.”

Clearly to Afiya’s benefit here is the fact that, as well as a problem-solver, she has always seen herself as a generalist. Her generalisation when it comes to management stems from her ability to switch rapidly between focusing specifically on one field in a given moment, to a completely different one in another.

“It's about being able to go in, come back out again, go in, on the right things.

“Sometimes, it’s people stuff. It could be that an individual is going through a really hard time. Or, ‘This team seems really stressed, we need to figure out how we can get some stuff off their workload.’ Or, ‘This person's been here five years, they've got a sabbatical coming up, so I need to make sure we have coverage for them while they're going on their sabbatical.’

“It can be any of those things. And at that moment, you do need to go deep and support someone when their family member's passed away. But you also need to support the other person who might need a database choice, a decision on that bit.”

Understanding users

Both as a people leader and as a technical leader, Afiya’s strength is her ability to frame the problem effectively. From a Product perspective, this boils down to understanding her users.

Again, Afiya roots this ability in her Materials education.

“In lean engineering or lean manufacturing, you think about the value stream, the end of that value stream. And that is not when the part comes off the line, it's actually when it's in use with the end user. So you have to think about everything until that point, where the user takes value out of that product. If a hip joint breaks while they're walking after their operation, that means that part hasn't delivered value. So you've got to think about everything, all the way to the point that it is in use.”

She recalls an early version of Tesco’s same-day delivery service, Whoosh, during her time there.

“Management canned the project while I was there. They tested it in London's Zone 1. They said, ‘No-one wants it.’ And we said, ‘Because no-one lives in Zone 1!’ That’s a really good example of understanding your users. I lived in Islington at the time. I was saying, ‘Test it in Zone 2 or 3. I’m your target customer. I don’t live near a big store, I don’t have a car. I would pay for some smoked salmon to be delivered!!’

As a manager, Afiya tries to instil this user focus in her managees.

“I had a conversation with a test engineer. And they said, ‘We've delivered this functionality and it gives us greater confidence in the success of our test runs.’ And I was trying to tease out of him what that meant. ‘We’re not responsible for the performance,’ he said, ‘we're responsible for the tool that helps us replay the data.’

“And I asked, ‘But what does that give us as an end value? How would you explain that to the end user? How would you explain that to the CEO?’

“In fact, through that tool, we get confidence in our performance numbers, which means we can release end value to the customer faster. You’ve got to work all the way down to the end of the value stream. And I think I could see the light bulb in that person's head because it's the first time where they had connected their work to an end result to a user.”

Lessons

A conversation with Afiya gives the impression that, despite a rapid series of promotions and ever-escalating set of responsibilities, she has set about every task in her career with fundamentally the same approach: define the problem, then identify the solution.

In absorbing the lessons of her scientific education fully, Afiya equipped herself with the toolkit to be able to apply this approach regardless of the specific problem at hand. While there is a uniqueness in her ability to see things so simply in the first place, and the clarity of thought that enables her to switch her lens fluidly between the interpersonal and the technical, the theoretical and the practical, and between the individual and the group, these are fundamental lessons that any manager can learn and take benefit from.