Geoff Mazeroff

Business

Rethinking Work Schedules? Consider These 4 Questions. (via Harvard Business Review)

1. How does my organization’s scheduling practices affect employee effectiveness and well-being?
2. Can we better align our work schedules with the needs, desires, and personalities of our employees?
3. What are the implications of creating customized schedules or giving employees more control over their schedules?
4. Can we effectively balance the needs and desires of both the organization and employees?

7 Strategies for Promoting Collaboration in a Crisis (via Harvard Business Review)

1. Encourage naïve questions and constructive challenge.
2. Watch out for hoarding behaviors.
3. Connect with the front lines.
4. Reinforce the business’s purpose and goals frequently.
5. Get team members to reflect on their preferred ways of working.
6. Play to your strengths.
7. Champion collaborative leaders and teams.

Career

Working Through a Personal Crisis (via Harvard Business Review)

• Manage the flow of information — how much you disclose and to whom
• Clarify your preferences and expectations — maybe you’re not ready to talk with others or just need people to listen instead of help
• Take care of yourself daily — self-care is important
• Find strength in numbers — others have similar experiences

Culture

When and How to Respond to Microaggressions (via Harvard Business Review)

“We are all one race: the human race.” devalues the experiences of Black people. We can either let these statements go, call them out, or address them later. Find out what matters to you, disarm the person that made the microaggression, then challenge them to clarify their statement.

How to Be a Better Ally to Your Black Colleagues (via Harvard Business Review)

• Listen and learn from your Black colleagues’ experiences.
• Engage with Black colleagues in racially diverse and more casual settings.
• Ask Black employees about their work and their goals.
• Provide your Black colleagues with opportunities, suggestions, encouragement, and general support.

Leadership

Radical Candor (Part 3)

Our book club discussed the first part of chapter 3 on understanding what motivates each person on your team.

5 Tips for Communicating with Employees During a Crisis (via Harvard Business Review)

1. Communicate frequently.
2. Provide safe channels for giving feedback.
3. Help employees work at home effectively.
4. Address concerns about job security.
5. Provide a plan for the future.

Process

Questionable Advice: Can Engineering Productivity Be Measured? (via Software Lead Weekly)

Measurement should be at the team level, because it’s difficult to capture how well one individual thought worker is doing working on a group activity. The author also recommends tracking other things that are a proxy for efficiency — “time elapsed between merge and deploy, frequency of deploy, time to recover from outages, duration of outages — as well as how often someone is paged outside of business hours.”

High Agency (via Software Lead Weekly)

This Twitter thread talks about talent and agency on a spectrum, and that high-talent high-energy people are bound to go farther. Having worked in an environment with very low agency, I can certainly appreciate the mindset he’s describing.