SWLW #551: The role of Management Systems in Strategy, The dark side of the leadership, and more.

Heya,

As always, below you can read my best findings for the week.
 

This Week's Favorite

Giving More Tools to Software Engineers: The Reorganization of the Factory
7 minutes read.

Erik Bernhardsson wrote a post in 2020 that I believe is more relevant than ever in today's 2023 Generative AI hype. "These things can all happen at the same time: (1) More software gets built (2) Software engineer salaries go up (3) The number of software engineers grows. [...] This might be counterintuitive, so it's worth contrasting this with something where demand is fixed. [...] The difference with software engineers is that demand grows when the cost goes down." -- I hope we'll get software engineers to be significantly more effective. If we do, it will only trigger more innovation, more demand for products, services, and tools. It will also lead to more demand for employees in various roles. The future is bright.

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Culture

Day in the Life of Startup Founders
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.

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What Strategy Questions Are You Asking?
6 minutes read.

I like Roger Martin's metaphor of looking at a company's strategy as a set of rooms to advance between, improving the depth and quality of your questions: "But I don’t like the metaphor because I see competitive advantage as dynamic, not static like a moat. And to be clear, I am not saying competitive advantage should be dynamic. I am saying, it is dynamic. [...] In this conception, every company, at any given point in time, exists in a room of its own making. The room is defined by the set of questions on which the company is working — and that set of questions is, in turn, defined by what the company understands about the market in which it competes. It understands things about the customers it serves, the technologies it uses, the competitors it faces, the industry in which it operates, etc. [...] The goal is to acquire clues as to what is the next set of questions, because when you figure out what those questions are, you can slip through the curtains to the next room."

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How Do You Build a High-Performing Company? (Thread)
4 minutes read.

Frank Slootman took companies to IPO: Data Domain, Service Now, and Snowflake. The 3 pillars behind "Amp It Up" are how you build companies at this scale, with thousands of employees and billions in revenues. This intensity is not for everyone, not as founders or employees. It's also not the perfect framework that you should copy and implement as is (e.g. his bonus structure is setting the wrong incentives). The power of "Amp It Up" is that it's explicit and clear, thus can scale better for the right people who have a good mutual fit for Slootman's companies.

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The Role of Management Systems in Strategy
7 minutes read.

Roger Martin covers the three key categories you must consider when building organizational management systems (as part of the company's strategy.) This is a great framing to consider when you judge the qualities (capabilities) your organization needs to win.

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Peopleware

The Dark Side of the Leadership
3 minutes read.

Elena Verna covers the negative sides of leadership in senior positions. Learning how to sustain healthy habits and mindset is something I'm struggling with myself, serving as the SVP of Engineering in the same company for 8.5 years. I've shared on LinkedIn before my "Am I happy at work?" framework to take a step back and observe my role. Reply to this email, and I'll send you the questions I ask myself if you feel it can be helpful to you.

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A Personal Retrospective on Open-Sourcing Prophet
6 minutes read.

Sean Taylor shares his lessons learned from open-sourcing a forecasting library while working at Facebook. It's an interesting perspective, almost like building a company in terms of commitment.

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"The Creative Process Is Fabulously Unpredictable. A Great Idea Cannot Be Predicted"
13 minutes read.

"You can increase the probability of having a good idea, which is the reason I pay so much attention to the creative process. It’s also partly for my sanity, to deal with that feeling of, Oh, I’m here again, and I’m staring at a blank piece of paper. I take enormous encouragement, and massive solace, in reminding myself how many times I’ve been in this position, where I feel that there are no ideas and I feel horribly stuck, and I keenly feel the burden and responsibility of the people that are waiting." -- Wonderful interview with Jony Ive. Creativity is a muscle, not a gift you have or don't have.

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@thejustinwelsh: Here is how I think about my business: (1) Goals: Decades. (2) Strategy: Yearly (3) Tactics: Quarterly (4) Effort: Daily. I simply plan on outlasting most people.

@drorpoleg: God, grant me the serenity to accept the meetings I cannot avoid, the courage to decline the ones I can, and wisdom to know the difference.



p.s. if you're interested in joining SWLW's Slack channel, simply reply to this email and let me know. If you're leading a team, consider writing your Manager README (it's free) or getting my e-book and interviews Leading Snowflakes: The New Engineering Manager's Handbook. You can also support me by becoming a SWLW Patron. Thank you ❤️




Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.