Professional Development – 2022 – Week 42

Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/54585499@N04/

Career

Striking a Balance Between Your Passion and Your Paycheck (via HBR)

  • Although it is possible to sacrifice some things like higher salary and stability to have a job you’re passionate about, (1) those types of jobs are harder to find (and take longer to find), and (2) typically work out better if you’re already well-off.
  • Find elements about your job that bring you joy. No job is perfect.
  • Shrink the amount of time you invest into your job.
  • Find other ways outside of work to bring meaning.
  • Help other people in a similar situation.

Hiring

How to hire for Director+ roles? (via SWLW)

There are too many bullet points to enumerate here, but this is a good starting point for a playbook about how to interview people for this level of role. There are also examples of how people interview well but flounder when given the chance.

Managing People

How to Help an Employee Figure Out Their Career Goals (via HBR)

  • Help them discover what they’re good at and areas where they excel
  • Expand their worldview by having them engage with others that have different roles (not full-on job shadowing, but just exposure)
  • Don’t steer too hard, or take it personally if they end up not choosing something you recommend

Managing Yourself

How to Move Forward When You Feel Frozen (via HBR)

  • Fear is a common reaction to uncertainty and stress. It can paralyze us and lead to counterproductive behaviors.
  • Think about what you have in abundance, not just what is scarce.
  • Find ways to open up to others rather than only focusing on those you interact with most frequently.
  • Make small movements instead of blocking yourself for fear of the consequences.
  • Write down the nemesis you are avoiding (via coming up with frantic lists of activities) and work out worst/current/best scenarios around that nemesis.

Project Management

How to plan? (via SWLW)

  • “Though to paraphrase Andy Grove, ;When deciding between organizing functionally and organizing along business units the right answer is always the other one.'”
  • “Meaning we find ourselves not asked to choose between right and wrong answers, but between trade-offs.”
  • The goals the author listed about what planning should be were pretty solid.
  • Things that work: (1) do fewer things, (2) don’t use only bottom-up planning, (3) don’t introduce new things at planning, (4) provide frameworks and constraints, (5) project planning has an inflection point, (6) don’t wait to kill bad ideas, (7) minimize dependencies, (8) headcount planning won’t map to your plans, (9) considering if money was not an object.
  • Purposes of planning: (1) synchronize and align a multi-threaded org, (2) forcing function to put dates/milestones in place.

Psychology

3 Reasons Subscription Services Fail (via HBR)

  • The model typically has four steps: (1) trigger to use the product, (2) action to create habitual behavior, (3) variable reward to satisfy the need for the service, and (4) investment in making the product more valuable with use.
  • Problem 1: Too many steps to get benefit. This is where people will switch to something else with less friction (or fewer decisions to make).
  • Problem 2: Not offering enough novelty, given humans aren’t wired to feel satisfied for long (i.e., hedonic adaptation).
  • Problem 3: Lack of value that makes the product better over time.

Writing

Research: Simple Writing Pays Off (Literally) (via HBR)

This article cites several studies showing that the style of writing used in public companies’ financial statements is correlated with financial success. Simpler writing is more enjoyable and motivates people to read further.