Posts from Awesome Folks #22

Author

Emily Webber
August 05, 2022

Hello,

August is here, and the sun is still shining :)

Despite the summer slow down, there are still lots of great things to read this week. Including posts about retention, decision making, cross-team collaboration and metrics.

Happy reading, and please give me a thumbs up at the end if you enjoyed this list.

Emily

People and culture

Disrespected Employees Are Quitting. What Can Managers Do Differently?

By Kristie Rogers and Beth Schinoff

"New modes of working require managers to adapt the ways they signal respect for employees. In a changing world of work — one in which remote and hybrid arrangements are now commonplace — how do leaders show respect for employees?"

We tried unlimited holiday for three years. Here's everything that went wrong.

By Ben Gateley

After three years, we are killing Charlie's unlimited holiday policy for good. We've decided that offering teams an unlimited holiday allowance just doesn't work – but probably not for the reasons you think.

Seven things you need to know about retaining engineering talent

By Ella Morrish

No matter the size of your engineering org, you can’t accomplish much without a skilled, cohesive team. Even a slight misalignment in your team's structure can significantly affect your output.

Research: We Make More Virtuous Choices When Using Pen and Paper

By Maferima Touré-Tillery and Lili Wang

From ordering food to buying a new book to making a charitable donation, more and more decisions that used to be made on paper are now being made on digital devices like tablets, phones, and computers.

Dump Traditional Reviews to Better Measure Performance

By Amy Leschke-Kahle

Evolve from old-fashioned practices to determine the data you need to measure and act on. Employees have been complaining about performance reviews almost as long as HR has, yet most organizations are still doing the classic “you’re a 4, but I can only give you a 3” performance reviews.

Setting and measuring goals

My Product Management Toolkit (54): Making Decisions – Part 2

By Marc Abraham

"Last September, I wrote my first post about decision-making. Being able to make informed decisions should be part of every product manager’s toolkit. In my earlier post I wrote about decision-making techniques such as Type 1 and Type 2 Decisions, Decision-Making Guardrails and S.P.A.D.E."

Tools and approaches for teams

Engineering metrics

By Ondrej Kvasnovsky

"We need to be able to see the delta between the values and the trend where we are heading. We can achieve that by putting the numbers on a timeline. A simple table where a date column contains the reporting values (within a fixed range) will do the work."

FAQ: What is shared understanding?

By Jeff Gothelf

In this short video I cover one of the most frequently asked questions I get: What is shared understanding? When we work together in cross-functional teams, one of the most powerful outcomes of that is shared experience.

3 creative sketching exercises to include in your next workshop

By Jackie Colburn

Engaging your team’s creative prowess is key to unlocking new ideas and uncovering solutions.

Other things

Working Through Your On-Camera Meeting Anxiety

By Morra Aarons-Mele

After more than two years of the pandemic, I finally had to accept a hard truth: The rest of my working life will likely be spent on video calls.

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