Dates covered: February 18-24, 2019 (week 8 of 52)
Business
Why Great Innovation Needs Great Marketing (via Harvard Business Review)
- Identify unmet and even unknown customer needs (before the smartphone, people didn’t consider having the Internet in their pockets)
- Understand the deep-seated drivers of perceptions and behavior that are relevant to a product’s appeal (VR really hasn’t taken off because the headsets are too clunky)
- Engage with customers through use cases and benefits instead of functionalities and features
- Develop the entire customer experience ecosystem (the Sony e-reader flopped because they didn’t engage with book publishers first)
- Use a go-to-market strategy appropriate for the innovation and its customer (Keurig targeted offices instead of appliance stores)
Why Some Platforms Thrive and Others Don’t (via Harvard Business Review)
- Strength of network effects (the more people that participate, the better the content)
- Network clustering (tightly connected vs. small clusters helps limit disruption)
- Risk of disintermediation (suppose you use a service to find a handyman; why would you use that service again if you already found a suitable person?)
- Vulnerability to multi-homing (example: drivers participate in both Uber and Lyft)
- Network bridging (connect different networks to create new verticals)
Career
7 Weird Ways To Help Combat ‘Hermit’ Habits As A Remote Worker (via The Software Mentor)
- Plan your outfit for the day the night before
- Use your morning routine for demanding pleasures
- Set a rule for going out in public
- Always be building playlists
- Place things that need attention out of reach
- Watch Netflix. Seriously.
- Keep going to the same coffee shop, dog park, or fitness class.
Culture
4 Ways Lying Becomes the Norm at a Company (via Harvard Business Review)
- Lack of strategic clarity (say one thing on the company brochures, but do something else day-to-day)
- Unjust accountability systems (performance measurement not linked to compensation)
- Poor organizational governance (people don’t know why they’re in meetings or who has decision-making power)
- Weak cross-functional collaboration (silos that protect their own interests)
How Companies Can Use Employee Data Responsibly (via Harvard Business Review)
- Give employees more control over what data about them is being used
- Create a system of checks and balances
- Use data to elevate people, not penalize them
What Is the Meaning of Work? (via TED)
Technology — call it AI, automation, machine learning — is here and will likely be an ever-growing part of our society. What does that mean for the jobs it’s displacing? The guest interviewed people to think about what work would mean 20-30 years from now — not so far in the future to be unrealistic, but near enough so there’s a shift. People want stability and dignity. I found it interesting that people making $150K+ want work that’s important to them, and those below that want work that’s important to others.
Can Just-for-Fun Hobbies Survive the Era of “the Hustle”?
I’m living this right now with putting together scale models; this article explains why I have some “default voice” in my head saying I should monetize this. Sometimes hobbies should just be hobbies. “Conway attributes the ascent of the hustle to a few different factors: busyness as a defense mechanism against economic precarity, the cult of productivity that’s taken over everything from self-care to actual careers, the proliferation of trite advice like ‘do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.'”
Leadership
5 Ways Bosses Can Reduce the Stigma of Mental Health at Work (via Harvard Business Review)
- Pay attention to language (namely people misusing mental health terms like “OCD”)
- Rethink sick days (you’d tell someone with the flu to go home, why not when they’re stressed?)
- Encourage open and honest conversations
- Be proactive about people’s mental health (some surveys report bosses are clueless about burnout)
- Train people to notice and respond
Mentoring Someone with Imposter Syndrome (via Harvard Business Review)
- Normalize their feelings — no one knows everything, and this feeling is common
- Empirically challenge negative self-talk — use facts to create dissonance between negative feelings (e.g., I totally botched that presentation) to facts (e.g., 90% of the attendees gave you positive feedback)
- Affirm, affirm, and affirm some more — give proactive praise and assurance
- Deliberately counteract stereotype threat — women and people of color are more likely to experience imposter syndrome; encourage these folks to proceed confidently
- Share your own imposter stories
- Don’t allow your mentee to give you all the credit
How to Make Sure a New Hire Feels Included from Day One (via Harvard Business Review)
- Even star hires need individual attention
- A new team member means a new team
- Meeting participation (i.e., equal time for new folks compared to existing folks) boosts a team’s performance
- Newcomers need support and amplification
Process
Making Learning a Part of Everyday Work (via Harvard Business Review)
- Be mindful of unplanned opportunities for learning (e.g., meetings)
- Maintain a “to-learn” list
- Use tech-enabled tips as you work
- Make dedicated time boxes of learning on your calendar
- Subscribe to a small number of high-quality, very relevant newsletters
- Contribute to a learning channel where work actually happens
- Make sure corporate knowledge systems are easy to use
- Share content internally
- Leverage APIs to bring content to the workplace
- Devote an internal channel to learning
- Put learning in the inbox
How to Break Down Work into Tasks That Can Be Automated (via Harvard Business Review)
- Look for repetitive work (instead of variable work)
- Look for independent work (instead of interactive work)
- Look for physical work (instead of mental work)
Why is your dev team soooo slow? 5 reasons. (via Steve Stamm)
Basically it’s one compound reason… stop starting, start finishing.
Passion Needs Rigor (via Software Lead Weekly)
Another article touting the benefits of deliberate practice. You have to keep working (make it a habit) and get feedback on your work.
Software development
The Elements of Highly Effective Pair Programming (via The Software Mentor)
If you’re getting started with pair programming or looking for resolutions to problems you’ve had when pairing, this post has a good collection of tips and tricks. One I was glad to see on there is giving yourself permission to take a 10-minute break in the middle of a session.
Your developers aren’t slow (via Steve Stamm)
The authoring company (Sprintly) surveyed their work item tracking data and found that unclear and changing requirements caused significant slowdowns. Context switching between tasks also impacts productivity.