Dates covered: August 19-25, 2019 (week 34 of 52)
Business
181 Top CEOs Have Realized Companies Need a Purpose Beyond Profit (via Harvard Business Review)
The tides may be turning on Milton Friedman’s era of “shareholder capitalism”. Modern CEOs are accountable to shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers and communities.
Are Your Company’s Strengths Really Weaknesses? (via Harvard Business Review)
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) should also consider other companies’ weaknesses and your own company’s strengths as threats. Too often an incumbent in a market (e.g., taxis vs. Uber) rest on their laurels and soon find themselves having to scramble.
Career
Why Are We So Bad at Choosing the Right Job? (via Harvard Business Review)
- Money talks, and people listen — although people say they’d take lower pay for some other benefit (e.g., shorter commute) they often don’t
- People are too good at tolerating bad jobs — “better the devil you know”
- Poor self-awareness limits smart choices — everyone wants to be their own boss/entrepreneur, but the expected value of this is very low in practice
- It’s hard to know what to expect — job descriptions are hooks to get you in and may not be accurate
When to Take Initiative at Work, and When Not To (via Harvard Business Review)
“When initiating a new idea, ask yourself if change is needed in the situation and, if so, what type of change is appropriate for that context. Avoid change for change’s sake. Think about how you can implement your ideas effectively given the goals of your organization.”
Communication
The Art of Interrupting Software Engineers (via The Software Mentor)
Sometimes a project manager needs more information then they’re getting, but they don’t want to micromanage or panic. Instead…
- Check in regularly (e.g., daily standups)
- Look for struggle (e.g., not understanding, not feeling confident)
- Understand the impact of work from a user perspective
- Be a sounding board
Culture
A Lack of Sponsorship Is Keeping Women from Advancing into Leadership (via Harvard Business Review)
There’s a difference between mentorship and sponsorship. The graphic in the middle of the article had a scale of roles I hadn’t considered before…
- Mentor — provide advice, support, coaching
- Strategizer — share “insider information” about advancing; strategize getting ahead
- Connector — make introductions to influential people; talk them up to your peers
- Opportunity giver — provide a high-visibility opportunity
- Advocate — publicly advocate a promotion; fight for them in settings where they can’t fight for themselves
Leadership
How to Be a Leader That Inspires People to Change (via The Software Mentor)
I agree with the author’s main premise: Demonstrate the attitudes and behaviors you want others to exhibit (i.e., lead by example). There are some other premises I’ve found that don’t hold true…
- “There are not bad teams, only bad leaders.” Sometimes you have puzzle pieces where some of them don’t belong to this puzzle; otherwise, we’d never fire line-level people, only leaders. Also, I’ve seen good things come out of poorly led teams.
- “Leadership isn’t about titles.” This can sometimes work. In my current role, the best leadership experience I was able to achieve was because I had the title. If you work in a culture where titles matter and you work with smart people, those people know where the real power is.
Process
Learning Is Supposed to Feel Uncomfortable (via Harvard Business Review)
“While the act of learning is primarily intellectual, behavioral, or methodological, the experience of learning is primarily emotional. And it’s the emotional experience of learning — of being a beginner and making mistakes, often publicly — that often keeps people from even trying to learn.”
Nobody really owns product work (via Software Lead Weekly)
“Nobody really owns anything in a product made by a team.” The questions he poses in the article (that many of us would ask) are valid:
- Did I do a bad job because someone changed my code? You shipped something that met the requirements at the time; things have changed.
- Should I stop speaking up because my ideas didn’t get traction? No; things build up over time.
- If my work didn’t last the long haul, did I create value? Yes; compare your work to what came before it, not after it.