Agile
When You’re Agile But Your Management Isn’t Really (via Mountain Goat Software)
Agile transformations typically fail when management doesn’t truly understand what this means and even worse when they don’t listen to feedback. This article has some tips about finding common ground with leaders so that you can earn trust.
Business
How to Design a Better Hiring Process (via Harvard Business Review)
This thorough article describes how one company designs questions, assesses technical skills, integrates writing exercises, and collaborative games into their hiring process. The process seemed focused and well thought out.
How to Play “Friendly Hardball” in a Negotiation (via Harvard Business Review)
Instead of asking how your offer compares to other offers, ask, “How does my offer compare to the minimum offer you’d be willing to accept?”
Research: Why Corporate Fraud Reports are Down (via Harvard Business Review)
Essentially the police are ill-equipped to handle increasingly complex fraud schemes, and it’s easier to handle things internally to recover lost funds. The downside is that if it doesn’t get reported, “serial fraudsters” can move to other organizations.
Career
Let Yourself Be Unproductive. At Least for a Little While. (via Harvard Business Review)
There’s so much emphasis on doing that even the slow activities involve doing (e.g., meditation, journaling, walks). Consider relaxing pressure on your time (e.g., don’t fill every hour, make time to step away), your thinking (e.g., go for a run with no music or podcast), and your relationships (e.g., maybe you do some solo activities, ask someone just to listen and not give advice).
Emotional Intelligence
What to Say When Someone Cries at Work (via Harvard Business Review)
This is a time to show curiosity and compassion, as people cry for any number of reasons. The article gives a number of sentences you can try, such as, “I’m going to stop our conversation for a second to check in with you. Can you tell me what’s going on for you right now?”
Mentors, Stop Saying “I Understand” (via Harvard Business Review)
If you can’t genuinely empathize with someone who comes to you with a problem, you risk losing trust. Use the “grandparent rule” by listening to the other person as an older person with wisdom. Explain when you can’t imagine what it’s like to experience the other person’s issue. When addressing issues, talk to the facts instead of using generalizations.
Leadership
Case Study: Should You Fight to Keep a Star? (via Harvard Business Review)
The scenario is a top performer received a better offer from a competitor, and it wasn’t just about money. How would you handle it if a hard-to-replace person left? Recruiting? Counteroffer? Promote from within? Ultimately you need to know your people and find ways to align what they want with what your company has to offer.
Our book club discussed getting, giving, and encouraging radical candor.
Look to Military History for Lessons in Crisis Leadership (via Harvard Business Review)
- Be decisive
- Be in the trenches
- Be agile
- Lead with confidence
- Communicate to inspire
- Move leaders and tasks rapidly
- Rest the troops
One Thing That Great Leaders Understand (via Software Lead Weekly)
Leadership and management are two different roles. You need good leaders and you also need good managers, and those two don’t necessarily need to be the same person. This article highlights attributes of both roles.
Productivity
A Plan for Managing (Constant) Interruptions at Work (via Harvard Business Review)
It’s common knowledge that task switching takes its toll on focus. One study found that when participants were told they wouldn’t have much time to finish the task that was interrupted, the new task was done poorly because of “attention residue” from the first. To alleviate this, jot down some context to help you quickly get back to a good state when you resume the interrupted task.
How To Overcome Dread Tasks (via Software Lead Weekly)
- Make it stupidly small (easier to make small wins that accumulate)
- Relabel (change the terminology to trick your brain into not pre-failing for you)
- Visualize the completion
- Talk about it with others (for accountability)
On Anxiety, Uncertainty, and Flow (via 8th Light)
Flow is the balance of challenge and skill.