Issue #278, 23rd March 2018

This Week's Favorite


Breaking Production for Fun and Profit: Running Game Days at Stripe (Video)
26 minutes read.

Watch this video with your team and think about how you can set up your own Game Days. Break things on purpose, and learn from it: check your intuition, challenge each other, explain your thought process and above all - have fun!

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Culture


If Boring Repetitive Things Aren't Automated...
1 minutes read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face. This is actually, pretty much true.

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Team Leader Venn Diagram: A Tool for Gaining a Shared Understanding of Responsibilities
4 minutes read.

This post by Lara Hogan can help resolving conflicts setting the roles & responsibilities of your Engineering Manager, Product Manager and Tech Lead. Try it with your peers, see how you can utilize it to set clear and explicit boundaries, e.g. "The Product Manager said we need to do it now, but the Engineering Manager said we have no people available to assist."

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DACI: A Framework That Helps You Make Group Decisions
5 minutes read.

I've never heard about the DACI framework, so it was very interesting to read how you can practice different roles in a complex setting. Reminded me of the way that I like to separate the roles of the Owner, Consultant and Preacher.

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How to De-Risk a Startup
5 minutes read.

Leo Polovets shares a practical framework for how to map out risks, rank them and then figure out how to reduce them. Take that into other areas in your company: leadership capacity, decision making, execution speed etc.

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Peopleware


Ruthless Prioritization
11 minutes read.

Brandon Chu shares powerful questions and frameworks for prioritizing between projects, within projects and dealing with risks. I believe that every leader in the organization (IC and managers) have to understand these frameworks so that you could be working on the right things, at the right time.

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Hanlon’s Razor: Relax, Not Everything Is Out to Get You
7 minutes read.

"When someone messes up around us, we forget how many times we too have done the same... To assume intent in such a situation is likely to worsen the problem. None of us can ever know what someone else wanted to happen." -- Think about this mental model next time you're dealing with a conflict at work.

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How to Make One of the Most Difficult Decisions as a Manager
7 minutes read.

"What I want to discuss, is a somewhat harder thing — the total melt down process of deciding to quit as a manager — by sharing this, I hope to help others from what I learned in my process." -- Netanel Lev shares what very few are willing to talk about. Your teammates deserve the best side of you. If your heart and mind no longer in there, it's time to make a change.

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Inspiring Tweets


@_shaunlloyd: Seniors don't grow on trees. They grow in companies willing to support and mentor their junior talent. If you want more seniors, make more time for your juniors.

@geowtf: Professionally, we have an obligation to create the talent we wish we could hire.

- 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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