Career
Don’t Quit Until You Ask Yourself These Questions (via Lifehacker)
- What aspect of this situation is making me want to quit? What’s the problem here?
- Can I fix the problem?
- If I can’t fix the problem, will it improve on its own in the future?
Culture
Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell’s book helps explains through several high-profile examples (e.g., Sandra Bland, Amanda Knox, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) how we as humans are inept at understanding strangers.
- We default to truth, assuming that the other person is being honest. This is critical to do, even if erroneous. Otherwise, we trust no one and cannot build societies.
- We think people are transparent — how they act and how we expect them to act makes us believe liars and distrust people who don’t match how we think they should act.
- We neglect coupling of people’s behaviors to their context or location. For example, we think that using aggressive policing tactics in targeted high-crime areas will work everywhere.
Real Mentorship Starts with Company Culture, Not Formal Programs (via Harvard Business Review)
- Use mentor-of-the-moment conversation starters
- Talk about their successes
- Ensure clarity, transparency, and accountability
- Hire and promote future mentors
- Routinely assess the mentoring culture
- Reinforce and reward mentoring behaviors
Leadership
Transforming Leadership with The Agile Wire (via Meta-Cast)
- You’re never “done” changing. Transformation implies an end state.
- The journey will not be easy
- When there’s true transparency — no fear of ramifications — you get trust.
- Empower the team with the “why” and not withholding info to get them fired up about it. People want to work and add value — they don’t want to be lackadaisical.
- “Well what do I do if I give all this power to the team?” Create an environment/culture and protect the team.
- “There’s no more fires to put out. What do I do now?” Ask how to help the team become more successful. The leader becomes the shepherd (protect). Build up the people below you with mentoring (raise).
- Someone needs to model leadership and guide the leaders, not just tell them to read a book.
- You have to call leaders out on older mindsets that don’t apply any more (e.g, I have to see people working or else I assume they’re lazy).
- Interviewing — resumes are a crap shoot. Discuss situations where candidates have been a change agent (e.g., shape a team, stand up something new).
- Most problems boil down to people skills. Tech skills are a commodity. Humble/hungry/smart (from The Ideal Team Player book). You’ll know you’ve hit this when if someone challenges you and you don’t default to defensive; you listen, consider, ask questions.
- Having a neutral party come in and observe can be helpful.
- Don’t just copy/paste frameworks, ceremonies, hackathons. Do they really work and serve the core values? What is the responsibility of the team to the company? Deliver value to the customers — the ceremonies and code are artifacts.
- You can’t ignore the management/C-suite in Agile coaching. The leadership has to understand it.
Why Boards Should Worry about Executives’ Off-the-Job Behavior (via Harvard Business Review)
Behavior off the job (e.g., DUIs, lavish expenses, speeding tickets) correlates to how likely they are to become involved with insider trading, fraudulent reporting, not reporting risk, taking changes, and being complacent on corporate social responsibility.
The Seven Habits of One Highly Effective Manager of Managers: Things I Learned from Charity Majors (via Software Lead Weekly)
- Communicate more — way more
- Stand for something, tell people about it
- Don’t try to be perfect
- Spread the good gossip
- Give to and accept help from your network
- Be hungry for new information and willing to do something with it
- Believe in people, support them, and give them space. Leave gaps for other people to jump into.
Process
Brainstorming: The Ultimate Guide (via Marten den Haring)
This article covers how the term brainstorming came about, and some reasons the process doesn’t work — group think, loudest voices win, management in the room, quantity over quality, lack of follow-through. An alternative is a scientific approach. First make an observation and then define the question. Next, get the “brain trust” to develop hypotheses (before coming together) to share. Let the group build on the ideas. Finally debate and experiment to try to disprove the hypotheses.
Program Increment – Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) (via Fatima Karwandyar)
The program increment is an 8-12 week cycle where Agile teams iterate to deliver something significant at the end. I think of it as a umbrella sprint for other sprints. This is something we’re trying to implement at Lirio.
Stress
How Anxiety Traps Us, and How We Can Break Free (via Harvard Business Review)
Common traps are…
- Catastrophizing — imagining the worst possible outcome
- Mind reading — imagining what others are thinking
- Fortune telling — imagining what the future holds, but without data
- Black and white thinking — only two possible outcomes
- Overgeneralizing — painting all situations with a general outcome
To overcome the traps…
- Pause the pattern — note the symptoms and do something different to stop the rumination
- Name the trap — once you know what it is, you have power over it
- Separate fear/uncertainty/doubt from facts — list out what you fear and line it up with how things truly are
- Tell more stories — write out alternate narratives for what’s going on
- Walk your talk — imagine a coworker/friend came to you with your problem; how would you advise them to respond?