Issue #91, 22nd August 2014

This Week's Favorite


IDEO's Culture of Helping
7 minutes read.

How do you create an organisation where different teams have an internal motivation to help other teams in the organisation become more successful? It's so easy to look and optimize in a silo-level, where each Team Lead cares only about boosting their team's performance. Reading IDEO's approach is both inspirational in the way they made it happen, but also puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of having your leadership team leading the process and setting the tone. If you're a team lead, what can you personally do to set an example of helping other teams? If you're a C-suite or founder, what can you do to promote and inspire a culture of helping?

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Culture


The Dilemma of Mobile Apps Development in One Image
1 minutes read.

As an ex-Founder of a mobile startup, this picture is pure genius. We have such a long way to go until we will be able to be as productive building mobile apps as we are building web applications. Until we do, have this picture with you next time someone asks you about your opinion on Phonegap versus Appcelerator versus native code.

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A Framework for Thinking About Work
6 minutes read.

"The interaction between product owners and engineers is an always interesting and sometimes tense situation" - Nicholas Zakas offers a grid system that would help you to prioritize work based on value/effort metrics. The challenge then, becomes about building trust between engineers and product people to trust in each side's view.

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Not Everything Is Awesome
5 minutes read.

Andrew Betts takes us through his entire thought process posting a job ad for his company. Really important read for this weekend, as it will make you to think harder on the individual you want to hire and their role as part of your team.

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Building A Recruiting Org
5 minutes read.

Twitter grew from 90 employees to over 1500 in 2.5 years. Elad Gil shares some of the insights he learned from this growth and the different phases in building a recruiting machine. Great insights on how to increase conversion to an email response when the company is still small, and the importance of hiring people who could scale your recruiting efforts.

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Peopleware


How to Maintain Focus When Managing a Product
5 minutes read.

This post is packed with ideas on how to prioritise & execute on what matters most. I liked most: "Write the press release first" and "Budget time for projects rather than estimating time". If you have time, listen to the video by James Gill (near the end of the post). Plenty ideas to copy and apply in your company.

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Steve Jobs on Problem Solving
1 minutes read.

An inspiring quote by the legendary Steve Jobs. Keep chasing problem worth solving.

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Inspiring Tweets


@mijustin: Ultimately, building great software is about having empathy: showing that you care about the user, and really understand their pain.

@dorkitude: "Optimism is the foundation of courage."

- 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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