SWLW #608: How to gather people and create communities, Advantages of incompetent management, and more.

Like always, sharing my best findings for the week. 

 

This Week's Favorite

Gathering Structures: How to Gather People and Create Communities in Ways That Are Low-Stress and High-Payoff
14 minutes read.

This remarkable post by Maggie Appleton provides many insights and frameworks (/structures) for arranging conferences and unconferences. Bookmark it and take it out next time you want to organize such an activity in your company or your community

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
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Culture

European Cafes: "No Laptops Allowed". Indiehackers:
1 minute read.

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

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11 Years of SaaS Product Strategy
8 minutes read.

"I’ve found there are two cadences that really matter, and if you can get product happening on those cadences then things will work well: (1) If you do your product thinking on the same cadence as that every other team prioritises work on, you can work together better. (2) If you do your product thinking on a cadence that matches how customers will deploy new features, they’ll be more comfortable with your pace of deployment." -- Simple and effective. I'll take this one with me going forward, thinking about when customers know how to benefit from the innovation and deliveries we set to provide.

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Advantages of Incompetent Management
9 minutes read.

"However, even a competent organization cannot set actually useful goals for everyone at all times, just like you generally need your legs, but you don’t really have a use for them at every moment. And thus, you have people with spare bandwidth making up their own goals, so that they have something to show in the performance review." -- "Incompetent management" can lead to surprising innovation and breakthroughs. It's never predictable and rarely repeatable, but it's a good reminder of the tradeoffs we're constantly making and seeking opportunities to enable different incentive structures.

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The Product-Market Fit Game
8 minutes read.

James Hawkins's post complements the other post I've shared today, "11 years of SaaS product strategy," as it really gives you a framework to understand where your company, product, and market fit. Your entire team should understand this so they can help influence the product and speed up your learning iterations.

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Peopleware

The One Key to Dealing With Senior Executives: Answer the Question!
4 minutes read.

Being direct, clear, and concise is how a healthy discussion starts on almost all levels. Very rarely people want to talk about all the details all the time. It's draining, and often, one side needs more context to fully understand or provide feedback on the details. They often want to get the overview and move forward, and for specific areas, they might want to delve deeper to ask more questions and better understand the situation. When talking with executives, this goes to the extreme.

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Someone on Your Team Says: “Our Goal Should Be to Move Metric X Up Y% This Half.” Your Inclination Is to Nod, Say “Cool” and Get on With the Actual Building. But Pause! The Goals You Agree to Determine What You Build. So Consider Them Carefully and Ask the Following: (Thread)
4 minutes read.

Julie Zhuo covers eight questions you should have in your arsenal when people set targets to verify the team's good alignment on what we want to achieve.

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What Can You Do to Increase the Purchase Frequency in Your Business?
3 minutes read.

In 2024 macroeconomics, figuring out ways to increase purchase frequency is a great way to reduce customers' churn rate and increase your revenues from existing customers (NDR). This framing can help you prioritize investment in products and measure the impact of that to the bottom line.

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@_TamaraWinter: I love asking people what they have unreasonably high standards for. The answers are always very revealing. And if they don’t have an answer—well, that’s also revealing. So, what do you have “unreasonably” high standards for?

@naval: The central contradiction of therapy is that the source of unhappiness is thinking about yourself.



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.