Business
The Circular Business Model (via HBR)
Manufacturing physical goods presents a challenge of not having consumers through your product in a landfill. The circular model involves reclaiming the product — leasing it (so you always own it and can reclaim it later), extending its lifetime, and/or making it more easy for consumers to recycle it.
3 Strategies for Rolling Out New Tech Within Your Company (via HBR)
- Start with the users; designing something high-level then forcing people to adopt it rarely goes well
- Select the right early adopters; find people receptive to new ways of working
- Mitigate the funding issue; locate ways to cover the costs and hours, or start small to make a proof point
Career
How to (Not) Plan a Career (via Software Lead Weekly)
Top-down is too fragile, and bottom-up is too aimless. Perhaps a meet-in-the-middle approach is best.
Culture
Fostering a Culture of Belonging in the Hybrid Workplace (via HBR)
- “We can embrace the fact that we are all living in a gigantic experiment where technology and what we used to call a workplace no longer have any limitations. We can instead focus on human needs and wants to stay healthy, productive, creative, social, and inspired.”
- “…hiring for culture add-on (ensuring that whoever joins adds something new to the team) rather than fit…”
- “Diversity will initially slow you down, it will create misunderstandings, and when people come from different, inequitable backgrounds, you will have opinions and worlds colliding.”
- “Those who are eager — and able — to return to the office will probably experience a sense of belonging, or perhaps it is their very sense of belonging that propels them to return to the office.”
- “People are longing for the connective tissue and social glue we once took for granted.”
Don’t Lose the Democratizing Effect of Remote Work (via HBR)
There are risks of losing DEI ground if companies force people to come back to work. This is especially the case for the lower-wage positions, who often can’t afford the commute and struggle to deal with childcare.
Leadership
Encourage Your Employees to Give You Critical Feedback (via HBR)
- You need a safe space (i.e., amnesty) for your direct reports to be off the record.
- When you get negative feedback, you need to absorb it and take some kind of action.
- Informal 360-reviews create an environment of trust
Process
The Problem with Prioritization Frameworks (via Software Lead Weekly)
The author gets to the heart of the same problem I have with SAFe’s planning technique of story points and weighted shortest job first (WSJF). They’re logical and simple; however, they rely on several factors that have high variance (assuming they can be predicted at all). Instead, get the right people in the room and choose the top priorities and get alignment on those. Also, you will have to say no to things.