SWLW #465: Willingness to look stupid, How to break down silos between teams, and more.

Heya,

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

This Week's Favorite

​​Willingness to Look Stupid
11 minutes read.

Dan Luu's writing will make you stop for a second and think. Are you drinking too much of your own Kool-Aid? Sometimes our intelligence is our source of power and strength. Are we ready to get better by allowing ourselves to be more vulnerable?

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.

Product [sponsored]

 Promote your product on SWLW and reach over 28,420 leaders 

Culture

Microservices Architecture After 5 Years of Coding
1 minute read.

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

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


Five Clues Your Employees Are Still in Crisis Mode
5 minutes read.

I love Lara Hogan's questions to assess different situations at work and getting the other side to share their view and engage. These two questions are handy: " If you were me, how would you handle this and why?" and "What are you optimizing for?"

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


How to Break Down Silos Between Teams
4 minutes read.

The part about "Communicate with intention" is so easy to miss. We all do our best to move forward, being productive and pragmatic, that we forget about the friction that comes with different views. Use the 3 questions offered by Raul Herbster in areas you have teams working together without a clear framework for how they want to work together.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


Working Backwards
14 minutes read.

Working Backward is a great book I enjoyed reading, and this post might get you interested. Reading about how Amazon works made me invest more in writing and ask more of our teammates to apply thinking through writing. It made the conversations deeper, and helped us understand each other better. "Bar Raiser" helped me shape how I imagine senior leaders making an impact. See if it triggers you to explore areas you want to improve, adapting it to your style.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.

Jobs [sponsored]

Full-Stack Engineering @ Modern Treasury
Build money movement infrastructure for the fastest growing fintechs. We're a small and growing team (SF, NY, remote) that values high quality code and shipping.

Full Stack Engineer @ Swimm
Swimm makes it easy for teams to collaborate quickly, get up to speed, and stay in the know anytime and anywhere. We're growing and boldly drive change in the way development happens.
 

 Looking to hire for your team? Promote your open positions on SWLW! 

Peopleware

10 Tips for Using OKRs Effectively
5 minutes read.

I'm sure that some of you are thinking and planning next year. I found this post by Rushabh Doshi helpful to leverage OKRs effectively by creating an alignment on what they are and how to use them.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


How to Win Without Talent or Luck (Thread)
4 minutes read.

I highly recommend following Sahil Bloom on Twitter. His writing inspires me as I always learn new ways to frame the world and my values. Some of my favorites: "Simplify Where Others Complicate," "Have Strong Plans (Loosely Held)," "Prioritize People," and "Play Long-Term Games."

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


50 First Levers - How to Start Building Leverage
5 minutes read.

Eric Jorgenson will get you thinking of the levers you're using today, and maybe come up with new ones. A few of mine: Leverage Twitter by following people who can expose me to thoughts and content in areas I want to learn about, Eat the same food at work every day to reduce mental load, Use a personal trainer with a goal "to come and practice for the next 50 years."

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.

And finally, inspiring tweets...

@rands: Managers tell you what’s happening. Leaders tell you what’s coming.

@abarrallen: Company alumni networks are often more important than college networks. Put as much care into picking the companies you work at, as you do picking your college!



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 and my work by becoming a SWLW Patron. Thank you ❤️




Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.