Issue #210, 2nd December 2016

This Week's Favorite


Negative Feedback Antipatterns
5 minutes read.

This post by Charles-Axel Dein is a must read. Providing constructive feedback on negative behavior is a skill everyone should try to improve. Strong teams should build such relationship and safe environment where people can push each other to improve. Charles's "ONFR feedback model" is a great mindset and format to prepare and deliver feedback.

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Culture


Startups in One GIF
1 minutes read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.

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What Companies Get Wrong About Motivating Their People
6 minutes read.

"In many companies, in the name of bureaucracy and procedure and streamlining things, we’re basically eliminating people’s ability to use their own judgment. We think about people as cogs. And because of that we eliminate their motivation." -- To motivate people, we should acknowledge the fact that people are already motivated when joining the team, and it's our job to learn what bothers them and demotivates them. Help them grow, show interest, and remove anyone or anything that creates a negative environment.

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How to Simplify Complex Decisions by Cleaving the Facts
8 minutes read.

Jason Choen's method to "Decide with upside, veto with weakness" by looking at upsides and downsides of each dilemma, can help making the conversation around strategic options, hiring or daily prioritization easier and more coherent.

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Instrument-Rated Management: Treating Conditions vs Symptoms
5 minutes read.

"I’ve experienced how energized and happy people are when they discover the right kind of work for them — work that uses their strengths, aligns with their values, and supports their longer-term careers — and when they have the means and the courage to pursue this work. Managers have an important role as well, namely to help people discover the right kind of work for them, and encourage them to do it. Even if it means supporting people through a transition to a place where the right kind of work is available." -- Dave Zwieback's words are so good, I don't need to add anything to it.

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Peopleware


The Books I Recommend for the New Manager
3 minutes read.

David Cancel books recommendation can be a great gift for new managers. Pick one or two from the list and buy it for a teammate who just started in this new role, and buy one for yourself. This can lead to interesting conversations at the office.

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Good Manager vs Bad Manager: How a Good Manager Is Worth $192,375 More
6 minutes read.

The cost of poor leadership in your company can easily add up to a ridiculous amount of money. The math here is a powerful drive and an eye-opener: The cost of a mistake in management positions can lead to terrible results, yet from my experience engineering managers are underserved when it comes to mentoring and setting clear expectations with them. We need to improve here.

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Teach Writing Code First
4 minutes read.

"People want to learn how to write code because they see all the fantastic things that can be accomplished with software." -- if you're trying to teach others in your company how to write code, start with helping them automate mundane parts of their work. Internal Hackathons can be a great start in this journey.

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Inspiring Tweets


@manisha72617183: One of the basic needs of a great software team is psychological safety. Any member of the team with low empathy skills,destroys that safety

@holman: If you’re a tiny startup, literally don’t do what Docker, GitHub, Slack, Stripe, etc., are doing. Look more at what they did years ago.

- Oren

P.S. Can you share this email? I'd love for more people to experiment and improve their company's culture.

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