SWLW #629: How to plan, Communication structures in a growing org, and more.

Like always, I am sharing my best findings for the week. Under "Culture," you'll find content worth reading and sharing with others; you'll need others' help to pull it off. Under "Peopleware," you'll find content that can help you approach situations differently with new perspectives and frameworks.   

 

This Week's Favorite

Facebook's Little Red Book
11 minutes read.

Wonderful historical piece that shows how you can set a narrative with a set of stories to explain the why and then move to tell the how in the same similar exciting way. The Hacker Way (p.49) - MacGyver over Bond or "Greatness and comfort rarely coexist." as examples - can set the heroes on stage and dictate decisions that are easy to remember.

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Culture

Great Way to Look at WFH vs. WFO at Amazon
1 minute read.

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

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Communication Structures in a Growing Organization
4 minutes read.

"At each level of the system, people have the context to understand what they’re talking about, and the relationships to say what they mean. Alignment is not bestowed; it is negotiated." -- Jessica Kerr shares how they shifted communication and alignment at Honeycomb to fit their organizational growing scale and structure. Iterate unapologetically to optimize what's critical for you while you fix the weaknesses in the faulted model you've picked.

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Context NOT Control
7 minutes read.

Sharing context so your team can operate effectively and make the best decisions with the knowledge and know-how they have is a target we all aspire to. While people want context, they are often overwhelmed with their day-to-day and don't have enough capacity to understand the nuances you had in mind. Make sure you don't share context to make yourself feel good about how transparent you are but rather to make others better at what they do. What should they take from it? What should they notice more, and what is now less relevant?

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The One Way I Know a Team Is in Trouble
5 minutes read.

Suzan Bond shares great reasons for "How false harmony sets in" that we all noticed over the years. Maybe the most difficult to handle are "Strong personalities suck up all the oxygen" and "We’re a group of functions, not a first team," as they often require more complex work to move the team forward (or having tough conversations). This one is a great insight: "We often misunderstand leadership. Leadership isn’t individual — it’s communal. Leadership isn’t about what we (or our team) can accomplish — it’s about making the entire system successful."

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Peopleware

How to Plan?
8 minutes read.

"Software as a medium is so malleable that functionally anything can be made to work. Any language, architecture, approach, style, process, etc can be made to work given sufficient effort. Meaning we find ourselves not asked to choose between right and wrong answers, but between trade-offs." -- Kellan's post should be a must-read for anyone dealing with longer-term planning. I loved his take on why a bottom-up approach is rarely a good idea: "Bottom up processes fall victim to anchoring. In a bottom up process you ask people to spend time and energy advocating for what they think the right thing to do is, and what resources they need to do it. They naturally emotionally invest in that outcome. This now becomes the floor for their expectations."

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This Was Einstein's Real Test: Not Whether Someone Could Spot Errors, but Whether They Could See the Hidden Possibilities Within "Wrong" Ideas. (Thread)
4 minutes read.

This is a brilliant test to see how resilient people are to live within their beliefs while being open to exploring what feels wrong. It creates an immediate conflict and intellectual drama. It shows how people argue and seek the truth (vs. confirmation bias) while learning how they reached their current observations and claims.

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Networking for People Who Don't Network
5 minutes read.

"People do love being thought of… but more importantly, life is made up of all of the tiny events that happen in between the big ones. Take advantage – bring people along for the ride of the micro-moments that are happening in your life, and it will help to keep your relationships alive." -- This is maybe the nicest way to be authentic if you don't like networking while making it fun and effective. There are times when networking is critical (e.g. you start a new role or a new business), and there are times you can proactively set time to meet others in a more comfortable setup that works for you.

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@hnshah: Note to self: Pay attention to the problems that bother you even when you're not getting paid to solve them. Notice the conversations that energize you even when you're tired. Watch for the work that doesn't feel like work, even when it's hard.

@BrianNorgard: The best things in life don’t scale.



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.