SWLW #606: Designing an Engineering Strategy, Breaking down ‘Executive Presence’, and more.

Like always, sharing my best findings for the week. 

 

This Week's Favorite

Cynicism Is Easy, Optimism Takes Work
3 minutes read.

It's so easy to break things and tear them down. Systems, humans. We're fragile. The world needs more builders and creators. There are no lions chasing us anymore in the jungle. We must program our brains differently and shift our information diet, if we want to create abundance in the world and attract people who want to see us grow (rather than putting us down so they'll feel better).

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Culture

Designing the Pricing Page of a B2B Company
1 minute read.

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

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Designing an Engineering Strategy. Part II
7 minutes read.

I've been thinking, reading, and practicing writing an Engineering Strategy. This four-part series on the topic is a great way to explore both the organizational (structure) and architectural (technical) sides of the topic. An effective strategy will help us shape a significant transformation to deliver critical business results within a given time span (I'd aim for two years).

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How We Designed Our Company for Speed
5 minutes read.

I'd read Posthog's principles and think about how you can (if you should) make speed something you optimize for. These principles are very much coupled into your go-to-market strategy, the technological challenges, and the type of talent you want to attract and retain. Don't copy anything out there hoping it will work for you as it does for them. Understand the incentives you put in place.

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Inversion Mental Model: What We Should Do to Make Our Teams Miserable
3 minutes read.

Inversion thinking can be applied in many areas - doing post-mortems (analyzing what can go wrong), figuring out how to launch a new product, and more. Preventing stupid mistakes is often more impactful than trying to aim doing all the right things. It might not be enough to make you world-class, but it will put you in the top 1%.

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Peopleware

Putting in the Most Extreme WIP Limit… 0
5 minutes read.

This is an interesting post. The comments were even more interesting. Did the team learn the right lesson(s)? What would prevent them from falling into the same trap again in a few months? How much damage did this cause to the business that could have been prevented with a different approach? My favorite takeaway and reminder when we think about WIP: "It’s important for leaders to recognise that their job first and foremost is to maximise the delivery of value NOT maximising the utilisation of resources." -- Maybe a better framing would be VIP (Value in Progress) and adding the "rule of 2+" so at least two people are working on a single value the team delivers.

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How to Read a Business Book
3 minutes read.

What a wonderful way to prepare your mental state to fully leverage new information: "Decide, before you start, that you’re going to change three things about what you do all day at work. Then, as you’re reading, find the three things and do it. The goal of the reading, then, isn’t to persuade you to change, it’s to help you choose what to change." -- Seth Godin is such a brilliant thinker and writer.

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Breaking Down ‘Executive Presence’…and How to Develop It, Too
6 minutes read.

"She adds that, on an individual level, employees can prepare for promotion by prioritizing the right work at the right time and effectively communicating their work outcomes and impact on the business or customers." -- The organization's premise is that you can create a dramatically larger impact, one that other executives care about and don't know how to achieve with their current structure and leadership.

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@SahilBloom: Maybe that failure you just experienced is your starting line

@thejustinwelsh: True mastery is shown by simplifying the complex, not complicating the simple.



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.