Situation
I was part of a technical leadership team at Capital One, tasked with accelerating the development of a new cloud-native credit card core that would replace our legacy mainframe system. The project was enormous, with over 400 engineers under three vice presidents, each responsible for different components of the build-out. One of these vice presidents, overseeing more than 20 teams, was consistently resistant to change. He didn’t have a strong technical lead, and every time I introduced new concepts or prototypes to help accelerate progress, he became defensive, challenging the strategy and delaying execution.
Task
My role was to influence these engineering teams, particularly his, without direct authority, to adopt modern infrastructure and architectural patterns. This was crucial to keeping the entire project on track and ensuring his teams could meet their deadlines. I needed to get his buy-in on the proposed execution strategy, move his teams forward, and help them deliver on time, despite the initial resistance.
Action
In the first iteration, I spent significant time working on proof-of-concept solutions, executable infrastructure, and early prototypes that demonstrated how the new architecture could improve efficiency. However, each time I presented these, the vice president would push back, questioning why we should move away from traditional methods or change established practices.
Realizing that this resistance was partly due to a lack of ownership and familiarity, I shifted my approach. I started by meeting with him one-on-one to better understand his concerns. I made it clear that I wasn’t trying to impose a solution but rather offering a way to make his teams more efficient. I involved his senior engineering managers early in the process, giving them the opportunity to weigh in on decisions and shape how we applied the proposed strategy.
Over time, I demonstrated the value of these solutions through measurable results. For instance, I showed how implementing certain prototypes reduced deployment times or how the infrastructure I proposed would help his teams scale without sacrificing quality. Instead of pushing for immediate adoption, I allowed his teams to experiment with smaller parts of the solution, building trust and proving the value gradually.
Result:
Over time, the vice president’s attitude shifted. He became more receptive to my suggestions, and his teams transitioned from consistently missing deadlines to systematically delivering ahead of schedule. The key turning point came when the engineering managers he trusted began to see the tangible benefits of the strategy. His 20+ teams were able to adopt the new architecture and work more effectively, which significantly accelerated the project’s overall timeline. By the end, not only had I won him over, but his teams were performing at a higher level of efficiency than they had before, consistently hitting their roadmap targets.