Always Be Unblocking

The most impactful engineers I know do not just write code. They remove obstacles for others.

Your impact is not measured by the code you write. It is measured by how much faster your entire team moves because of you. At Cherrypick, we call this “always be unblocking” and it has become one of our core values.

From Adder to Multiplier

Most engineers start their careers focused on individual contribution. They measure success by features shipped and code committed. This makes sense: technical excellence matters. However, the best engineers evolve beyond this. They transform from adders into multipliers.

An adder contributes their own velocity. A multiplier amplifies the velocity of others.

This shift in mindset changes everything. You begin to see opportunities everywhere to remove friction from the system. Your code is a liability, but your ability to enable others is an asset. Small investments in tooling and knowledge sharing compound over time, creating exponential returns as your organisation grows.

What Does This Look Like?

Here are some examples from our experience at Cherrypick:

• Building small tools that let customer support handle password resets without engineering involvement
• Ensuring multiple people know how to manage license keys and other critical systems
• Spotting patterns where teams get stuck and fixing them before they become bottlenecks
• Creating clear documentation that prevents the same questions being asked repeatedly
• Sharing context about decisions to help others move faster independently

The best part? This approach compounds. Each obstacle you remove does not just help today. It keeps paying dividends every time someone does not hit that same blocker.

Speed Through Enablement

In my recent article about how to avoid bad startup culture, I wrote about how speed of execution is crucial for startups. However, speed is not just about moving fast yourself. It is about enabling everyone around you to move faster too.

This is particularly important as your organisation grows. The more people you have, the more valuable it becomes to remove obstacles that slow multiple people down. A day spent building a tool that saves ten people an hour each week is a phenomenal return on investment.

The Highest Leverage Work

As a CTO, I have learned not to ask “what can I build?” Instead, I now ask “what is slowing my team down?” The CTO’s role is not to build - it is about enabling solutions and setting the example for others to follow. The highest leverage work often is not the code you ship. It is the barriers you remove for others.

This mindset shift requires humility. You have to be willing to spend time on work that might not be technically challenging or visible. You have to care more about team outcomes than individual recognition.

Teams that embrace “always be unblocking” will outperform those focused purely on individual contribution. They move faster, learn faster, and ultimately deliver more value to customers.

Making it Part of Your Culture

For this approach to work, it needs to be valued by the organisation. At Cherrypick, we explicitly recognise and reward unblocking work. We look for this mindset in hiring. We celebrate when people remove obstacles for others.

Some practical ways to encourage this:

• Make it safe to spend time on tooling and enablement
• Recognise and reward those who help others move faster
• Share stories of successful unblocking work - we use a #celebrations channel on Slack
• Include it in performance reviews and career progression ladders
• Lead by example: be willing to do the unglamorous work of removing obstacles

The Compounding Effect

The beautiful thing about focusing on unblocking is that it compounds over time. Each obstacle removed creates space for new possibilities. Each tool built frees up energy for the next improvement.

This creates a virtuous cycle: as your team gets better at removing obstacles, they move faster, which gives them more time to remove obstacles, which helps them move even faster.

The relationships you build through this work will outlast your job and even your code. When you help others succeed, you create lasting impact that extend far beyond the current project or company.

The next time you are deciding what to work on, consider this: the highest impact work you could do today might not be writing new code. It might be removing the barriers that are slowing others down.

Because in the end, your real impact is not measured by the code you wrote. Your impact is measured by how much faster your team moved because you were there.