Readings and Watchings on Leadership
These are a few of my favorites
Accelerate: https://itrevolution.com/book/accelerate/
Richard Cook On Resilience In Complex Adaptive Systems
Management advice
- Turn the Ship Around | L. David Marquet | Talks at Google
- The Manager’s Path (Particularly chapters 2, 4, & 5)
- https://essentialcomm.com/podcast/
- Women outperform men with collaborative knowledge work, also
- Googles excellent work on leadership and high performing teams
- https://www.radicalcandor.com/
- https://firstround.com/review/radical-candor-the-surprising-secret-to-being-a-good-boss/
- https://hbr.org/2019/11/cracking-the-code-of-sustained-collaboration?
- The 4 skills successful leaders cultivate
- https://firstround.com/review/the-managers-guide-to-inclusive-leadership-small-habits-that-make-a-big-impact/
- https://www.psypost.org/2020/07/future-focus-has-the-power-to-transform-the-practice-of-feedback-57383
- Roy Rappaport’s famous “Manager README”
- “Seams” and How to think through a re-org https://hbr.org/2017/02/most-reorgs-arent-ambitious-enough
- Why Glue work is so important and how it can hold your career back https://noidea.dog/glue
- How to communicate your strategy: “Compress to Impress”
- You’re probably better off writing a white paper, but if you must use slides follow these simple rules: https://youtu.be/Iwpi1Lm6dFo
Product Management
All software engineering leaders should read Marty Cagan’s book Inspired and follow the SVPG blog and send your PMs to their trainings.
Management Training
I’ve worked with these companies and have found them useful in building high performing teams.
Intrinsic Motivation (versus extrinsic)
Dan Pink (autonomy, mastery, & purpose) video link
IMO, the 20 minute video is all you need.
Models for performance evaluation
Netflix: Adequate performance gets a nice severance
See Slide 23
Data Science
The Gradient is a great way to stay up to date
Stitch Fix’s excellent article on Full Stack Data Science
I love how Netflix thinks about data analytics work
https://multithreaded.stitchfix.com/blog/2019/08/19/framework-for-responsible-innovation/
Personality Styles
Meyers Briggs
Useful as way to teach the concept of “personality styles”, but not a predictor of behavior
Big 5 AKA “OCEAN” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
Enneagram
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enneagram_of_Personality
https://www.theartofgrowth.org/
My favorite starter book “Enneagram Made Easy”
Adult Attachment Styles
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/compassion-matters/201307/how-your-attachment-style-impacts-your-relationship
Attached: The New Science…
More focused on couples but still relevant to work relationships
Systems thinking and organizational effectiveness
- http://seattlescrum.com/articles
- https://less.works/resources/learning-resources/articles
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Discipline
Remote Work
https://basecamp.com/guides/how-we-communicate
https://increment.com/teams/a-guide-to-distributed-teams/
Titles and Levels
Training your amateur Psychologist
Culture
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/copy-paste-repeat/id1448815461
Pithy Sayings and Aphorisms
- “Least cost learning” (unknown)
- “Improving daily work is more important than doing daily work” (The Phoenix Project)
- “What’s my favorite type of problem? Somebody else’s!” (me)
- “2 in a box never works out” (unknown)
- “Reward outcomes not activities” (every manager 101 training)
- “Automated high-confidence deployments” (me)
- “ All models are wrong, some are useful” (George Box)
- “There is ONE backlog and Product owns it” (me)
- “What you do often, you do well” (unknown)
Generally useful things
Git Cheat Sheet: https://ndpsoftware.com/git-cheatsheet.html#loc=remote_repo;
