Agile
How Project Managers Can Stay Relevant in Agile Organizations (via Harvard Business Review)
- Make sure you understand their organization’s goals when it comes to implementing agile workflows.
- Rethink your success metrics: rather than meeting a set budget, timeline, or scope or work, project managers should focus on metrics like development cycle time and proportion of decisions made based on objective data.
- Continuously examine you own processes and seek to adapt and improve themselves to meet the evolving needs of customers and coworkers.
What If You Don’t Have Dedicated Teams (via Leading Agile)
- Context switching = waste
- People working fractions of efforts across teams leads to resources being unavailable when needed on-demand
- Balance having dedicated/stable teams with headcount: do less stuff (reduce WIP)
- Prioritize: stable teams, good backlog, delivering value consistently
- To try this out if management isn’t bought in… build a baseline of metrics you and management agree on, then experiment and reflect on the results to build trust
Culture
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Kindness at Work (via Harvard Business Review)
My company does this through quarterly meetings — we call it Cheers for Peers. We also use the HeyTaco app in Slack to give kudos in the moment. It’s still worth considering how important these serendipitous moments are while working together.
The Hazards of Being the Boss’s Favorite (via Harvard Business Review)
- Do: (1) Consider talking to your boss about the situation. Be honest about its effect on the team. (2) Be aware of appearances. Try to create some distance between you and your boss. (3) Work hard to win your colleagues’ favor. It’s difficult to resent someone who’s helpful and engaged.
- Don’t: (1) Be angry with your boss. It’s likely they don’t appreciate that they’re triggering resentment among your colleagues. (2) Hoard your boss’s attention and goodwill — encourage them to publicly acknowledge the value and contributions of others. (3) Allow your boss to gossip to you. Gently coach them out of this behavior.
Danish
- øjnene står på stilke — (no English idiomatic equivalent) looking curiously at the sight of something; lit: eyes standing on stalks
- barnemad — piece of cake (something that’s easy to perform); lit: baby food
Leadership
How to Set Up a Remote Employee for Success on Day One (via Harvard Business Review)
- Identify, appoint, and communicate a dedicated onboarding liaison.
- Create a connection to the company before the first day.
- Set up technology before the start date.
- Build strong 1:1 relationships.
- Recognize team dynamics and build a broader network.
- Make unspoken assumptions explicit.
- Designate a culture buddy.
- Set clear expectations and connect the individual’s work to the broader organizational mission, vision, and goals.
Mentoring
What Great Mentorship Looks Like in a Hybrid Workplace (via Harvard Business Review)
- Build rapport with 1:1s
- Be clear on purpose — create benchmarks, celebrate wins, align with organizational values, be consistent
Purpose
How to Discover Your “Why” in Difficult Times (via TED)
- Ask a friend (not a spouse or family member) to describe why you are their friend. This is difficult because friendship is usually a feeling and not a verbal contract. Eventually they’ll give up and start talking about themselves — how they feel when you specifically interact with them.
- Instead of asking questions (“How are you feeling?”) make statements (“I’m worried about you.”).
- Leadership is about taking care of those around you. All titles do is allow you to lead at greater scale.