SWLW #412: A manifesto for small teams doing important work, How to debug distributed teamwork, and more.

I hope that you and your family are doing well, and you are able to find a new rhythm in this hard situation.

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

This Week's Favorite

​​A Manifesto for Small Teams Doing Important Work
3 minutes read.

Seth Godin's writing is spot on, serving as a beautiful manifesto for knowledge workers. I'd try to be careful with this one: "Mostly, we do things that haven’t been done before, so don’t be surprised when you’re surprised." -- we tend to think that too much, and we don't follow this advice enough: "Question premises and strategy. Don’t question goodwill, effort or intent."

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
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Product [sponsored]

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Know when you have DevOps bottlenecks and should start delegating infrastructure to developers. Also, two fundamental challenges with infrastructure delegation, and how automation and tooling could help.

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Culture

Senior Developer Fixing a Bug in Production
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face, even in this difficult time.

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Limiting Work in Progress
6 minutes read.

Daniel Truemper writes a great intro to why you should limit Work In Progress: "The role of management and leadership is to introduce barriers into when and how to start a new project. Additionally, celebrating finished projects that meet the quality bar is also important. Finishing a project and handing over the technical debt to another team means it is not finished."

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How to Debug Distributed Teamwork, as Suggested by New Research
8 minutes read.

Leisa Reichelt shares interesting insights based on a study that began in April 2020. While it's not surprising, I think the negative magnitude covid-19 will have on organizations will be much larger than we currently see.

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Groups Search for Consensus, Individuals Search for Truth
3 minutes read.

"Society does not just lie to you. It programs you to beat yourself up when you transgress one of its truths. Guilt is society programming you so effectively that you become your own warden. Guilt is society’s voice speaking in your head. Truth-seeking is a hard business. You essentially have to understand, with deep conviction, things that you’ve been programmed to misunderstand." -- how much of it is right in your work? Naval Ravikant with a lesson we should know.

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Jobs [sponsored]

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Peopleware

Transitions - Stepping Down as CEO of CircleUp
15 minutes read.

"I want to share my experiences and vulnerabilities with full candor in the hope that other founders can have a resource that I lacked; that they can learn from my experience and feel less lonely than I have through this process." -- Ryan Caldbeck's story is brave and important. Being around many people yet feeling alone can have a mental tax that we don't talk about enough in our industry.

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Before I Was a CEO, I Made Decisions Faster. But Now, I Have the Final Call So I Find Myself Pondering Things More. I’m Often Asked About My Decision Making Process. Here’s a Look at What Goes Into Making the Most Important Ones... (Thread)
3 minutes read.

Todd McKinnon (CEO of Okta) with useful advice for anyone who leads a big team and tries to optimize for the right leverage. I'd put extra attention on the first step, as it's often overlooked due to day to day inertia: "IDENTIFY - I identify what decisions I need to make and what I don’t. I think of my job as figuring out which 5 or 6 critical decisions I need to make and get a high hit rate on them. 4 or 5 out of 6 = great. 2 for 6, not good."

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@amysundae: Be someone that people want to work with again.

@Julian: Luck is a function of surface area. You increase your odds by exposing yourself to more opportunities and more people. There’s a reason why successful people tend to be proactive and resourceful. They’re extending their reach. Reach is a serendipity engine.



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Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.