A long list of gems and tools.

Butch talking through his recording process on Smashing Pumpkins albums and Nirvana’s Nevermind.

Jacob Kaplan-Moss:

What’s a transition file?

It’s a document that you prepare for whoever ends up succeeding you in your role. It should contain all the information you’d want them to know to ensure as smooth a transition as possible. Done right, the document should help them step into your role with a minimum of disruption.

James Stanier:

When you’re staring a huge, challenging project in the face, don’t align your team around just getting it done. Instead, align your team around continually reducing uncertainty.

You reduce uncertainty until the software exists. You reduce uncertainty by doing: prototyping, designing, writing code, and shipping. Each of these actions serve to reduce the uncertainty about what is left to build.

Zero Defects means the goal would be considered ‘failed’ if there were even a single defect, so even if the intention behind the goal was good, it puts great pressure on people to find other ways to achieve this impossible objective.

Eric Melloul:

Another important capability is assembling an ecosystem of partners and suppliers that do the work for you. Because of limited resources, you cannot do it all.

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The ability to be more patient and take more risks is what sets midcaps apart.

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I see many companies move from an incentive structure that was based on growth and profit to one based exclusively on profit. That drives the wrong behavior because it forces managers to focus on cost instead of growth, short term instead of long term.

Aaron Lerch:

Hiring for additivity requires intentionality. It seeks to answer the question “how does this person change us for the better?” It avoids both stagnation and a lift-and-shift cultural change.

Farnam Street:

Sometimes doing nothing at all or removing inputs is the better approach.

Derek Thompson on how solving finite games can ruin the infinite games that surround them.

Dina Denham Smith and Alicia A. Grandey:

Leaders are expected to attend to employees’ mental and physical health and burnout (while also addressing their own), demonstrate bottomless sensitivity and compassion, and provide opportunities for flexibility and remote work — all while managing the bottom line, doing more with less, and overcoming challenges with hiring and retaining talent. They should appear authentic, but if they get too honest about their distress, others may lose confidence in their leadership, known as the “authenticity paradox.”

This whole article resonates with my experience.

Jason Yip:

Organizational effectiveness in market development is efficiently running a lot of experiments to find promising opportunities.

Organizational effectiveness in growth and maturity is efficiently building, scaling, iterating, and exploiting capabilities in order to maximize business value.

Organizational effectiveness in decline or commodity / hygiene capabilities is reducing total cost of ownership.

Charity Majors:

The strategy for a fulfilling, lifelong career in tech is not to up the ante every interval. Nor is it to amass more and more power over others until you explode. Instead:

1. Train yourself to love the feeling of constantly learning and pushing your boundaries. Feeling comfortable is the system blinking orange, and it should make you uneasy.
2. Follow your nose into work that lights you up in the morning, work you can’t stop thinking about. If you’re bored, do something else.
3. Say yes to opportunities!! Intensity is nothing to be afraid of. Instead of trying to cap your speed or your growth, learn to alternate it with recovery periods.
4. If you aren’t sure what to do, make the choice that preserves or expands future optionality. Remember: Most startups fail. Will you be okay with your choices if (& when) this one does too?

Noah Brier:

Lumpers think splitters are neurotics, and splitters think lumpers are careless.

Camille Fournier:

Either way, it is important to realize that these more senior levels are not a measure of betterness, or quality, or raw intelligence and technical skills. They are instead a measure of demonstrated impact and confidence in the scope of work that the person can be tasked to accomplish. The people who get these promotions are trusted to navigate the systems of the company, to understand what is valued by the people around them and where to spend their time, because they have done just that.

Cam Daigle:

I’m hoping this system helps you have better meetings – that the people running the meeting feel like it’s worth their time to run them, and that the people in attendance feel like their presence there matters.