Dates covered: January 7-13, 2019 (week 2 of 52)
Business
The Legacy of Herb Kelleher, Cofounder of Southwest Airlines (via Harvard Business Review)
Herb passed away last week, and those who knew him appreciated his leadership style. 30 years after Southwest went public, it never lost money despite being in an industry where bankruptcies and “red ink” are the norm. He had a cause to “democratize the skies” and used that mission instead of profits to drive his work. His approach was also different than the rest of the world’s — simplicity and consistency over non-stop innovation.
The High Price of Efficiency (via Harvard Business Review)
Management science marches to the drum of efficiency; however, there are two other effects that rarely get considered — 1) efficiency creates monocultures, 2) efficiency with respect to companies is not Gaussian. Both of these are why you see only a handful of big players in any given industry. (Statistics note: The distribution at work here is the Pareto distribution, which is not random. Things like peoples’ height are Gaussian because the data points are independent, but wealth is not. For instance, every $1 I have is $1 you don’t have. Instragram followers have a Pareto distribution as well — you need followers to have followers, which is why Kim Kardashian has millions and most everyone else has fewer than 100.) Management school teaches that efficiency means short-term gains (which are supposed to be proxies for long-term shareholder value) are important, but that doesn’t hold. Organizational resilience (according to the author) is a solution — limit the size of businesses, introduce friction in global trade and capital markets, give long-term investors more say in strategic decisions (instead of hedge funds), create jobs that focus on learning and adaptability rather than cheap labor, and tune educational programs to balance efficiency with resilience.
The Strategy Puzzle of Subscription-Based Dating Sites (via Harvard Business Review)
If the matching algorithm is too good, the matched pair will stop using the site (which hurts cash flow). Also, different people have different goals (e.g., match quickly, shop around with no rush). One model could be commission-based, but it’s difficult to measure because most of the relationship work happens offline.
Career
Eight Must Have Non Technical Skills For Software Development (via The Software Mentor)
Ability to communicate, categorize tasks according to priority, analyze customer requirements, work should be systematized, uniqueness and creativity, ability to provide insights, willingness to think outside the box, open to learning/staying current on tech.
Does Higher Education Still Prepare People for Jobs? (via Harvard Business Review)
With the rate of change in skills, adaptability is more valuable to employers. There’s a mismatch between what attributes colleges recruit for (and eventually strengthen) and what employers want — emotional intelligence, resilience, empathy, and integrity. Many schools also don’t teach leadership skills, which would be helpful when it’s common for top performers to be promoted into leadership without much training in that aspect.
Communication
How to save your team from meeting misery (via The Software Mentor)
- Give people the goals, agenda, and ways to prepare before the meeting
- Schedule meetings in advance so people can plan around them
- Let people be optional if they don’t need to attend
Writing in the Workplace: Email, Memos, Reports, and Social Messaging (via Communication for Technologists Pluralsight channel)
Professional writing is contextual (solves a specific problem in a specific moment in time), based in genre, is a process, and involves revision. This course covers the common traits of professional writing, and then covers most of the subgenres one would encounter in a professional setting — memos, informal reports, trip reports, incident reports, test reports, investigative reports, progress reports, meeting minutes, and instant messaging.
How Leaders Can Get Honest, Productive Feedback (via Harvard Business Review)
To improve performance we need three things: 1) a clear goal, 2) a genuine desire to achieve that goal, 3) feedback that lets us know if we’re on the right track.
- Build and maintain a psychologically safe environment
- Ask for feedback with open-ended questions
- Request positive and negative data
- Give your full attention (use active listening)
- Don’t debate or defend
- Own your reactions
- Demonstrate gratitude
- Reflect and evaluate
- Make a plan and take action
- Sustain progress and share updates
Culture
Here’s What Really Makes Up a Good Company Culture (via The Software Mentor)
Vision + Values + Plans and Targets. “A company that tries to be everything to everyone will end up meaning nothing to those who matter most.”
What Are You Willing to Give up to Change the Way We Work? (via TED)
The world is moving faster and getting more complex. It’s about responding to change; the command-and-control model may not be able to keep up. What we need is alignment (why/what) and let the teams have the autonomy to get there. (This sounds a lot like Agile and DevOps.) It will be different, and people will need to give up some of their perceived notions and comforts.
The Personality Trait That Makes People Feel Comfortable Around You (via Steve Stamm)
“Some people can walk into a room and instantly put everyone at ease. Others seem to make teeth clench and eyes roll no matter what they do. A small body of psychology research supports the idea that the way a person tends to make others feel is a consistent and measurable part of his personality. Researchers call it ‘affective presence.'”
7 Components of an Actionable Team Charter (via Software Lead Weekly)
- Background — context of your team
- Mission and objectives
- Budget and resources
- Roles and responsibilities
- Team operations — how your team does things (e.g., makes decisions)
- Team member assessment — what does success look like for each team member
- Signatures/approvals
Why Most Performance Evaluations Are Biased, and How to Fix Them (via Harvard Business Review)
In short, they’re too open ended (because they have to apply to every role in the company). One solution is to create a rubric for evaluation with specific criteria. Running a “consistency check” across your reviews can help point out bias as well.
Data Was Supposed to Fix the U.S. Education System. Here’s Why It Hasn’t. (via Harvard Business Review)
The assumption is that if we have more data, we can answer the question, “Are the students learning?” The author argues that teachers don’t need to become data scientists; they need to have data support what they do best, which is teach.
Leadership
How to Better Manage Your Poor Manager (via The Software Mentor)
It’s likely that managers double-down on their strengths and their failures and struggles are overlooked. This post describes some situations where you can “manage up”. When a manager can’t seem to decide, it’s often a risk discomfort or knowledge gap; here you can help plan several paths and how you’ll learn if they’re right. When a manager won’t accept blame, there’s no incentive to learn because the cause is always out of his/her control; use honest feedback and accountability. When a manager seems disengaged, try viewing it from his/her perspective; perhaps it’s a chance for you to have more freedom and control, and to communicate up. When a manager doesn’t give feedback, he/she often states the importance of something but never follows up. Behaviors are driven by the consequences that follow. Some tips here: give your peers feedback, provide status updates on your work. When a manger says everything is a priority, he/she puts employees in a no-win scenario with little focus (and usually don’t acknowledge that they’ve done as much); figure out your own priorities and stick to them — what do you want to “go big on?” When a manager seems incompetent, it’s likely he/she has lost a technical edge while focusing on other things; use this as an opportunity to teach.
These Are The Amazing Leadership Lessons You Can Learn From The Worst Boss You’ve Ever Had (via The Software Mentor)
- You won’t get loyalty from others if you don’t have their backs
- Covering up problems just makes them worse
- Admitting you’re human establishes trust
- Discouraging new ideas stifles innovation
Managing When the Future Is Unclear (via Harvard Business Review)
“The best managers find ways to provide steady, realistic direction and to lead with excellence, even when the strategy isn’t clear.”
- Focus on what you can do well right now (deliver value)
- Without certainty, there’s still likelihood
- Embrace short-term strategies (sprints)
- Learn from those around you
- Acknowledge negative emotions
- Keep team communication open
- Imagine what a leader you respect would do
- Engage other managers
- Look to thought leaders
Hard Conversations: Are You Dreading a Work Discussion (via Harvard Business Review)
(This is a 30-minute podcast.) We avoid these difficult conversations because you feel like you’re hurting the other person’s feelings. On the other hand, sometimes it’s just not worth it to bring things up. Is the problem persistent or really serious? Here were the three scenarios the hosts covered (the possible resolutions and banter is too lengthy to capture here):
- A new/young employee partnered with CEO on a project; she ended up working late hours because the CEO didn’t keep appointments
- A younger person was promoted twice in front of someone who now reports to her.
- A coworker at a startup complains all the time about everything about work and mentions he’s already looking for another job
Process
Learn to code (or do anything): top down, bottom up and other approaches (via The Software Mentor)
I’ve definitely seen this in non-technical topics for my career and in learning how to build scale models. With bottom-up (I learned this as “from first principles”), you start small but without any meaningful context. With top-down, you get overwhelmed with how much you don’t know; there’s meaningful context, but it’s too difficult to wrap your head around the “how.” One solution is to work on the smallest practical application of a problem — it’s meaty enough to let you see how things connect, but small enough so that you don’t have to understand everything all at once. (Aside: That reminds me of the Carl Sagan quotation: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”)
5 Strategies for Getting More Work Done in Less Time (via Harvard Business Review)
- Clarify expectations — do you need an detailed report, or just a rough sketch?
- Reuse previous materials — recycle as much as you can from similar work (presentations, emails, proposals, memos)
- Develop templates and checklists — another example of reducing rework
- Make it a conversation — sometimes a verbal discussion is more efficient than a detailed report
- Time-box your work — you may not get to the answer at the end, but it will help you focus (and it’s a finite quantity of time to invest)
The Great CEO Within (via Software Lead Weekly)
A huge Google Doc that’s essentially a playbook of how to do pretty much most of the important things in a company (leaning tech-startup in culture). My favorite parts were the individual and tech habits, some of which I’m doing now (or have tried without much success) and a few new ones.
Growth Loops: circular causality is real (via Software Lead Weekly)
This short article has examples of negative and positive feedback loops, and reminds us to be aware of them so that we can use them effectively.
Technology
Implementing DevOps in the Real World (via Understanding DevOps Path on Pluralsight)
Main focus: what’s a typical week of DevOps like? What are the core practices? What management change is needed? What are some “getting started” tips?