Leadership

Many topics this week. I love the hack of a stolen laptop, the post of cascading goals made me think, good climate news cheered me up and check out random for some fun and funny stuff. Leadership Setting your engineers up for success: how Skyscanner created greater clarity in our competencies and pathways to progression - interesting approach, kind of similar to my favourite one from Etsy TBM 41/51: Why Goal Cascades are Harmful (and What to Do Instead) - interesting. I always thought top down, cascading goals were a good thing. I have to think about this more. ...

AI art: lady in front of cityscape Two week of links again. Will’s post about hiring quality was fascinating. And I learned about Sturgeon’s Bias, which I have to remember for the future. Leadership One-on-ones with executives. - cool advice from Will Larson about ad-hoc 1:1s with executives Is Engineering Management Bullshit? - no Sturgeon’s Biases - TIL: “Ninety percent of everything is crud.” Eight Traps to Avoid When You Take Over a Team - a bit late, but thanks ...

AI generated art of modern, but run down office building Quiet week. The team assessment repository has a lot in it and I just started looking through it. Interesting papers about urbanism, but maybe I just say that because it confirms my bias. Leadership Multi-team Software Delivery Assessment - nice collection of useful team assessments, everything from team health, to delivery and security Imposter Syndrome [Comic] – it’s me Benefits of Pulse Surveys for Remote and Distributed Teams - a bit spammy. I used to be highly sceptical, but now I am a convert. If done right and with the right communication, these can be super helpful for all teams. ...

This week I enjoyed the podcasts about Culture AMP’s data and the one with Daniel Pink about regret. I am still browsing the Gallup State of Workplace survey, it is a lot of data. Leadership Build Week at Buffer: What It Is and How We’re Approaching It - we used to call that just hack week. Build week is definitely more inclusive. ...

Some good long reads today: The classic “Give Away Your Legos”, how to slowly kill your org, Why Spotify Squads are a Failure and Bicycle Graveyards. A few podcasts, the one about agile is definitely worth it. Leadership ‘Give Away Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups - classic article 190 Brilliant Examples of Company Values - so many values, so similar. The ones from Build-A-Bear a fun. ...