Dates covered: July 15-21, 2019 (week 29 of 52)
Business
The Case for Hiring More Full-Time Workers (via Harvard Business Review)
Many people are taking part in the gig economy; however, this work typically lacks health insurance, unemployment protections, and predictable hours/opportunities. Traditional full-time workers have more stability, which reduces stress — which in turn reduces illness, tardiness, distraction, and unproductiveness. Full-time employees also are more likely to stay with a firm, which leads to more value, respect, and appreciation — thus reducing the cost of replacing employees and the brain drain when good employees leave.
Career
3 Questions Hiring Managers Want You to Answer (via Harvard Business Review)
- What will it be like to work with you? The interview is a dialogue, not an exam to be passed.
- Can you learn? Don’t bluff your way through answers.
- Do you take initiative?
Why Consultants Quit Their Jobs to Go Independent (via Harvard Business Review)
This article sites some compelling data that going independent can mean better outcomes — satisfaction in types of work, compensation, intellectual challenge, flexibility, less tied to political maneuvering for titles, gender pay-gap. Traditional employers can…
- Offer employees more choice and control over the work they do
- Create a better sense of work-life balance
- Recognize that highly-skilled women and younger workers are being undervalued in traditional firms, making them flight risks
- Create an “independent” division
Use Failure as an Opportunity to Reflect on Your Strengths (via Harvard Business Review)
Resumes typically avoid mentioning failures and how we dealt with them. Sometimes not getting into a competitive doctorate program or passing the bar means other opportunities present themselves that will better play to our strength. I love this quotation from Adam Grant: “We are more than the bullet points on our résumés. We are better than the sentences we string together into a word salad under the magnifying glass of an interview. No one is rejecting us. They are rejecting a sample of our work, sometimes only after seeing it through a foggy lens.”
What is a 1x Engineer? (via Software Lead Weekly)
This is a fantastic set of expectations for an engineer / software developer. As an industry we get so caught up in the outliers and celebrities, and forget that it’s okay to be okay… and what “okay” means.
Communication
The Art of Persuasion Hasn’t Changed in 2,000 Years (via Harvard Business Review)
- Ethos/character — build your credibility of why people should listen to you
- Logos/reason — use evidence and data to appeal to reason of why people should care about your idea
- Pathos/emotion — this is where you connect to your audience on a deeper level
- Metaphor — compare your idea to something the audience already knows
- Brevity — start with your strongest point
How to Reach Out to Someone Whose Career You Admire (via Harvard Business Review)
- Establish your credibility
- Offer value
- Highlight what makes you interesting
- Make it clear that you have no expectations
Managers, You’re More Intimidating Than You Think (via Harvard Business Review)
- Realize how your title may make others perceive you differently than you’d expect
- Your facial expression can be off-putting (essentially this is RBF, although the article doesn’t state it explicitly)
- Moderate your responses to help build psychological safety
- Ask specific questions instead of general feedback
Don’t ask forgiveness, radiate intent (via Software Lead Weekly)
The author takes umbrage with the phrase “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.” Although the intent is well-meant — push against rules that are arbitrarily holding you back or weakly enforced — instead we can take a page from David Marquet’s book and act while stating our intentions. This allows the context to be clarified and for people to speak up before a huge mistake is made.
Culture
What to Do When You’re Caught in a Lie (Even an Unintentional One) (via Harvard Business Review)
- Reflect on why you lied; dishonesty is never random… Overlooked? Unfairly criticized? Cultural norm to inflate things?
- Assess the credibility damage; don’t diminish the damage because it keeps the problem alive
- Look for ways to demonstrate honesty
The Slackification of the American Home (via The Software Mentor)
Workplace productivity tools like Slack, Trello, Asana, and Jira can help people be more productive outside the workplace as well. I use Trello for managing my projects, and a few times I’ve used it collaboratively with my wife on joint projects. There is the potential of blending work and downtime making them harder to keep separate.
Are Politically Diverse Teams More Effective? (via Harvard Business Review)
The takeaway for me was more about how Wikipedia gets things right for discourse about polarized topics (conservative, liberal, societal, political). There are strong norms about what’s important for article quality (e.g., citing sources, neutral point of view) that opponents agree on.
For Leaders, Decency Is Just as Important as Intelligence (via Harvard Business Review)
Leaders need IQ, EQ, and DQ. IQ (intelligence quotient) is about business competence and understanding how to succeed. EQ (emotional quotient) is about understanding emotional states of others and empathizing. DQ (decency quotient) is about genuinely caring for others and doing right by them. “We’re entering an era where the possibility for distrust may be heightened. Technology, innovation, and automation are changing the very nature of work. Instead of letting them fracture us, we can use decency to find ways to move forward without leaving anyone behind.”
Where Is Your Company Most Prone to Lapses in Integrity? (via Harvard Business Review)
No company is 100% righteous, and the misconduct that occurs may not be reported. Gather data to identify the gaps. Learn where to focus, find better ways for employees to voice concerns, and determine the true size of the iceberg.
Making Joy a Priority at Work (via Harvard Business Review)
It’s easy for companies to get into “… too many layers and silos, too many colleagues who prefer to stay in their comfort zones, bask in their KPIs, and resist new ways of connecting and working.”
- Harmony — having a diverse set of strengths where people work well together
- Impact — teams working together to achieve a goal
- Acknowledgement — people work together and praise and give each other credit
Has Sexual Harassment at Work Decreased Since #MeToo? (via Harvard Business Review)
This study shows that gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual coercion have reduced. All coworkers need to treat this issue seriously even though it’s been two years since the peak of the #MeToo movement.
“We Were Coming Up Against Everything from Organized Crime to Angry Employees” (via Harvard Business Review)
This is an interview with the CEO of Norsk Gjenvinning, a waste management recycling company that was dealing with a wide array of problems in trying to get above board on ethics. I appreciated that it showed that it wasn’t a unicorn journey — there were things that didn’t work and low points as well as successes. Transparency, accountability, and trust are key.
Process
Why Criticism Is Good for Creativity (via Harvard Business Review)
- “Yes, but” — this is the typical response to defend an idea; the problem is that it dismisses any idea that has flaws (which is nearly all of them)
- “Yes, and” — this is the design thinking response; the problem is that flaws aren’t discussed and reworked
- “Yes, but, and” — a compromise where flaws are discussed and improved with feedback
Two other IT colleagues and I are reading The Phoenix Project together. This post covers the topics we discussed from chapters 6-10.
Productivity
4 Ways to Help Your Team Avoid Digital Distractions (via Harvard Business Review)
- Create quiet spaces for mental recharging
- Encourage phone-free break time
- Set the social script (I’ve done this through team charters that explicitly define acceptable mobile device use.)
- Empower employees to block out focus time
Software development
The challenges of teaching software engineering (via The Software Mentor)
The challenges this author faced when coming up with an intro course for software engineering had me nodding my head. For example, command-line vs. UI, what’s important to know vs. know about, source control and the various workflows. A hidden gem was the link to his book (APPropriate Behaviour) — the table of contents shows how broad the discipline of software development is.