It feels like a gross understatement to say that the pandemic has changed the future of work. Unemployment, remote work, shifting industries...you get it. I’m not saying anything you haven’t heard about many times over already. I do want to drill down on a particular aspect of leading remote teams though. How do you know when anyone is getting work done? In an in-person office, we start with the assumption that if you’re at work, you’re getting work done. Rightly or wrongly. Even if you …
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Could We Go Faster?
Recently, I came across Patrick McKenzie's blog post about working at Stripe. He breaks down why he feels like Stripe has been able to move faster than most other companies of the same size. There are obviously many factors at play here including organizational policies, team structure, communication norms, hiring...the list goes on. I really loved this line of questioning though: I have seen truly silly improvements occasioned by someone just consistently asking in meetings “Could we do …
Lessons Learned From the Netflix Culture
I recently finished reading Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility by Patty McCord, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix. Hat tip to my former colleague Kelly for the recommendation! The Netflix culture has drawn quite a bit of attention since their Culture deck was made public. In many ways, the book was an expansion on the key bullet points in the deck, but I found the additional context and detail in the book really interesting. There's no question that Netflix has …
The Art of the Awkward 1:1
I found this post about awkward 1:1s valuable and hope to begin incorporating some of the suggestions in 1:1s. Very often, people waste most of the 1:1s potential. You might make a little agenda, and then give some updates, some light feedback, and share some complaints. It’s helpful and valuable and nice. But, ask yourself: is the conversation hard? Are you a little nervous or unsure how to get out what you’re trying to say? Is it awkward?Because if it’s not a bit awkward, you’re not talking …
Leadership and Value Add Disease
I came across this article from Boz discussing "value add disease" as it pertains to leadership, and it struck a chord. It's certainly something I'm trying to keep top of mind as I step into a different leadership role at Zapier. Defining "value add disease": Whether it be a manager or a reviewer or inspector, people in positions of authority feel a sense of responsibility. Like anyone else they have a job to do and they want to do it well. If work is presented to them and they make no …
Churchill on Leading With Calm During a Crisis
I recently finished reading The Splendid and the Vile, a fantastic novel depicting Winston Churchill's first year as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. While reading, I was struck by the gravity of the situation Churchill faced immediately upon stepping into office. Hitler had begun his conquest across Europe conquering Holland and Belgium. France would fall soon afterwards. Throughout his first 12 months as Prime Minister, Germany would bomb the United Kingdom relentlessly, killing tens …
Peterson on Comparison
I just finished re-reading Jordan B. Peterson's 12 Rules for Life. I read slowly—managing maybe 10 pages per day. Speed wasn't the goal. I wanted to digest as much as I could. I probably underlined and highlighted passages on half of the pages. I found something valuable in each rule, but my favorites were "Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today" and "Be precise in your speech." In the rule on comparison, Peterson had this fantastic quote that I …
Foundational career skills
Or, as an alternative, wordy title: The Theoretical Pyramid of Professional Development. Today, I want to chat about career skills, but if you'll spare me a moment for a quick digression, I'd like to wax on about a completely separate topic: CrossFit. We'll tie this all together here momentarily. One of the fundamental principles in CrossFit is communicated through a pyramid, specifically the "theoretical pyramid of athlete development." Nutrition exists at the base of the pyramid …
Mental Models for Any Time
If you're like me, your mind has been overloaded by information recently. As a result, I've been trying to use this pandemic to build better mental models and become a better thinker overall. You can think of mental models as simply a way to understand what's going on in the world and make sense of complexity. The goal is to make better decisions when your mind would otherwise be overwhelmed by details. My go-to resource (for a long time now) for becoming a better thinker and developing …