Agile
Role of the C-suite in Agile Transformations (via Leading Agile)
- Clarify strategy and priorities so empowered teams can deliver
- Balance reporting relationships with skill-based teams
- Role-model the mindset and behavior changes needed for an Agile culture
The 10 Steps to Becoming a Great Agile Coach (via Leading Agile)
This was an hour-long presentation from Mike Cottmeyer, the CEO of Leading Agile, an Agile consultancy. He shared what he looks for in coaches he hires based on his 10 years of experience. The three he seemed to prioritize were the hard skills, emotional intelligence, and reading/writing as much as you can.
- Develop the hard skills (i.e., how you’d do the work with teams, Agile at scale, or org transformation)
- Get the right experiences of using those hard skills
- Fit in to your company culture
- Be a good community citizen
- Recognize your belief system (small vs. big teams, people vs. business)
- Understand your default behaviors (e.g., personality assessments)
- Develop emotional intelligence
- Learn to think fast on your feet
- Work through solutions to find the organized solution amongst the chaos
- Use pattern recognition, systems thinking, and planning
ING is a Dutch bank (i.e., not a Silicon Valley tech startup) that adopted many aspects of Spotify’s model and had success with it. This article describes how they did it, how culture was a key driver, and some observations they’ve made on their journey.
Business
Beyond Silicon Valley (via Harvard Business Review)
- Outside Silicon Valley, startups focus on both growth and profitability, build resiliency into their models, charge for the value they create from the get-go, and take a long-term outlook.
- Many customers are willing to jump to slightly more expensive services because the existing solutions are dysfunctional (unreliable, unsafe, inefficient).
- Frontier startups (at least outside the US) are focused on “real problems” such as health, food, education, energy, financial services, or housing.
- To find talent, distributed workforces are common. Other companies are partnering with universities to build a training pipeline subsidized by the company with a full-time job as an outcome for the students.
How the Coronavirus Crisis Is Redefining Jobs (via Harvard Business Review)
- Make work portable across the organization
- Accelerate automation so that human effort is spent on things machines aren’t good at (e.g., empathy, creativity)
- Share employees in cross-industry talent exchanges
Communication
How to Answer an Unanswerable Question (via Harvard Business Review)
- Acknowledge your own anxiety
- Listen to the need underneath the question
- Ask questions that help others find strength
- Don’t interpret questions as critique
- Practice your tone and delivery ahead of time
- If you blow it, recover quickly
Culture
Another Workplace Crisis: Loneliness (via Harvard Business Review)
- We spend nearly a third of our day at work. Having a good friend at work with whom you can be yourself is important for engagement, satisfaction, and productivity.
- Humans need to feel seen fully for who they are, and to know that we are loved (embraced, appreciated).
- Showing up to a video meeting is not the same as being present in the room. Recognize the tradeoffs we’re making. Choosing efficiency over the human cost is not sustainable.
- Leaders are typically taught to not show vulnerability, which loneliness is related to.
- Operate from a place of kindness, compassion, and empathy, even in the small things.
- One of the most powerful things we can do is practice active listening with others. It is the greatest gift you can give to another person.
- We are working more (evenings, weekends, vacations) because it’s assumed that we will prioritize achievement (the acquisition of wealth, power, or reputation/fame).
- The most powerful solution to loneliness is service (helping other people), which forms a bond with them and reaffirms we have value in the world.
Government
It’s Not Too Early to Prepare for the Next Pandemic (via Harvard Business Review)
Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that the federal administration in 2019 will heed any of the advice in this article. The administration seems to focus on the core tenets of denial, blame, and playing the victim. We would do well to have a non-partisan retrospective on what we did well and what we can improve upon for the next pandemic.
- Spotting emerging pandemics via global health systems with funding from the US
- Delaying entry into the US via science and technology instead of prejudice and ethnic stereotypes
- Containing the infection through both federal and state/local public health agencies
- Minimizing the physical and economic pain via a modernized public health information infrastructure and universal access to healthcare
Leadership
How to Talk to Your Team When the Future Is Uncertain (via Harvard Business Review)
- Steel yourself; you’re teaching people how to succeed in a crisis
- Consider how you’d want to hear from leaders in your position
- Use rousing, inspiring language
- Be honest and truthful about what you know
- Don’t sugarcoat or you’ll lose trust
- Meet with your team members 1:1 and in small groups to offer support
How to Persuade People to Change Their Behavior (via Harvard Business Review)
- People don’t like being directed to do things, as they feel power is taken away from them.
- We strive for internal consistency (attitudes and actions align), so highlight gaps in their thinking.
- Pose questions that force individuals to answer (e.g., “Do you think junk food is good for you” vs. “Junk food makes you fat.”)
- Ask for a smaller change (e.g., drink one fewer soda each day instead of cutting out soda completely).
- Address the barriers for change instead of telling people to change.
The Psychology Behind Effective Crisis Leadership (via Harvard Business Review)
People often equate vision as the hallmark of a good leader. In times of crisis, vision is not enough — leaders need “holding,” a psychological term for acknowledging people’s emotions and giving them a sense of reality and context. Holding allows people to focus people’s desires to act into something useful.
Our book club discussed fixing policies over making exceptions to them, saying “no”, and philosophies of management.
We’ll be working remote for another 6+ months. Time for a 1:1 tune-up. (via Software Lead Weekly)
This post had an example agenda for a 1:1.
- Look around — what’s on your mind, are we living our values, feedback for execs
- Look back — engagement and performance
- Look forward — blockers to goals, long-term items, career path