Derek Thompson:

Role-switching is important not because quitting is so wonderful, but rather because sampling from different skills and fields is helpful, provided that you’re prepared to pounce on an area that clicks for you. Explore, then exploit.

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He argues at one point that artists and other professionals feel happiest when their “body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

Richard Mironov:

Prioritization is more than an analytical/intellectual exercise. It’s an organizational challenge with natural disagreements among stakeholders. Product leaders need to think about motivating the right kinds of participation and addressing the emotional issues that arise. Spreadsheets and models are necessary, but not sufficient.

A post that looks at various aspects of being a senior leader.

I personally have a fondness for framing the role as building the machine that builds the machine and all that entails.

Richard Marmorstein:

There’s nothing wrong with a fondness for data. The trouble begins when you begin to favor bad arguments that involve data over good arguments that don’t, or insist that metrics be introduced in realms where data can’t realistically be the foundation of a good argument.

Chris Stjernlöf:

When reading Robert’s Rules of Order, I learned two things that struck me as deeply important, which I had misunderstood in the past:

• The purpose of debate is not winning, it’s about information sharing.
• Votes should not need to be counted, the result should be clear anyway.

Sam McAfee:

Many organizations still focus the majority of their decision making on one person or one small group of people at the top. This concentration of decision making isn’t just inefficient, it’s degenerative. No organization that maintains such centralized control over decisions will be able to adapt at the speed required by today’s markets.

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The other key to promoting autonomy is to ensure individuals and teams have the skills they need to act on the clarity that comes from strategic thinking. Skills are honed through delegation. Managers must practice delegation to successfully develop new skills in their direct reports. And yet, good delegation skill is more rare than it should be.

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Teams can then take the clarity they capture from long-term strategic thinking, the capabilities they’ve built by having decisions delegated to them, and combine them into action that is fast, flexible, and responsive.

Skills that lead to good code stewardship.

Kara Cutruzzula:

Why is defensiveness such an obstacle to collaboration? When we get defensive, “we put way more into self-preservation than we do into problem-solving,” Tamm says. “We’re trying to prove that we’re right rather than search for creative solutions.” When this happens in a workplace, it can be a recipe for chaos and failure.

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OK, now that we understand the dangers of defensiveness, here’s what we can do about it. You can start by learning to spot the warning signs of defensiveness in yourself. When you feel yourself experiencing them, pay attention and take action. According to Tamm, here are the 10 most common warning signs that you may be getting defensive: A spurt of energy in your body; sudden confusion; flooding your audience with information to prove a point; withdrawing into silence; magnifying or minimizing everything; developing “all or nothing” thinking; feeling like you’re a victim or you’re misunderstood; blaming or shaming others; obsessive thinking; and wanting the last word.

John Cutler:

We confuse clarity/coherence and certainty. If clarity/coherence equals certainty, and a strategy is supposed to be clear and coherent, then unless we are certain, we can’t have a strategy. Meanwhile some high percentage of the audience for our strategy wants certainty. If they haven’t heard confident certainty, then they haven’t heard a strategy.

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The unlock, I think, is realizing that you can confidently communicate a coherent strategy that also acknowledges uncertainty. You know what you know. You assume what you assume. You believe what you believe.

Dave Bailey provides a manager’s guide to holding their teams accountable.

Jason Yip:

• Authority-focus: “Not my job, not my problem.”
• Responsibility-focus: “What is the right thing to do? How can I help?”

Responsibility-focus reflects the belief that “we’re in it together”.

Jason Yip:

When you work in team-based product development, you will need to deal with drift.

By drift, I mean an increasing mismatch in understanding about:

• the problem we’re trying to solve;
• the solution we’re attempting;
• each other and how to relate.
• Drift in shared understanding creates confusion, mistakes, and generally a bad working experience.

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Daily standups ensure understanding is integrated across a team at least once a day.

Dave Kellog:

In the end, there are two types of things that CEOs can potentially stress about:

• Things they can control. They shouldn’t stress over these because they should do something about them, instead.
• Things they can’t control. They shouldn’t stress over these because doing so will not change the outcome. Worse yet, it may well change the outcome — for the worse — over the things they can control.

Ergo, CEOs should never stress about things. QED.

I’m still a sucker for code editors.

Suggestions for how to make meetings worthwhile.