Posts from Awesome Folks #23

Author

Emily Webber
August 12, 2022

Hello,

This week I have been in the throes of conveyancing, last time I moved house, I said "Never again", but here we are. Conveyancing in England and Wales is a particularly broken system; it's confusing, complicated and relies on lots of things and people lining up. The current industry average is 5 months - and it's not legally binding until you exchange contracts, about a week before you actually move, before which anyone can just stop the whole thing, leaving everyone in the chain to start again. It's very stressful.

There is nothing like being subjected to a broken system to remind me why I care about making things better and at the heart of it all is people, both the end users who are trying to achieve a goal and people who are helping move it along.

This week, I have been reading lots of posts about people, including gender equality, career portfolios and decision making. Enjoy the posts and please hit that thumbs up at the bottom or drop me a quick message to let me know you do.

Happy Friday

Emily

(@ewebber)

People and culture

Stop Undervaluing Exceptional Women

By Elizabeth L. Campbell and Oliver Hahl

Progress toward gender equality has stalled. Women are doing what conventional wisdom says is necessary for success: They’re earning advanced degrees, entering high-paying industries, and acquiring impressive qualifications at rates equal to or higher than men.

A tech lead’s guide to effective communication

By Addy Osmani

You need to be able to clearly present and talk about complex ideas, designs, visions, and architecture with people of varying technical ability. You need to share knowledge and summarize trade-offs with the right level of detail to improve transparency and influence decision-making.

We trialled a 9-day-fortnight and made it permanent – find out why

By Chantelle Ebhogiaye

Back in September 2021, we rolled out a trial for our 9-day-fortnight (read more about it right here) – our teams wouldn’t work every other Friday with no change in salary, holidays or working hours. This was a really exciting time for Charlie."

Stop Offering Career Ladders. Start Offering Career Portfolios.

By April Rinne

The past two and a half years have been a giant lesson in workplace flux. In any given week, month, or quarter, a new and often disruptive change emerges to knock leaders and organizations sideways.

What Are Your Decision-Making Strengths and Blind Spots?

By Cheryl Strauss Einhorn

What do you do when you face an important but complicated decision? Do you turn to experts? Dig for data? Ask trusted friends and colleagues? Go with your gut? The truth is many of us approach decision making from the same perspective over and over.

When HiPPOs Use Their Power to Decide for Other People

By Johanna Rothman

Many agile teams and product leaders assume they can make many product decisions on their own. They do have some constraints, such as “this kind of customer” and “these kinds of problems.

Getting better at getting better

By Chris Combe

Unfortunately, many people are still stuck in the hamster wheel of being over utilized (capacity wise) and they are told to focus on delivery. If your manager / leader / stakeholder isn’t letting you invest in learning and improvement, then there is a learning opportunity for them as well.

Don’t Let Employee Engagement Wither in a Hybrid Office

By Clara Shih

To this day, some of my closest friends are people I met at various jobs over the course of my career. Before the pandemic, every day I looked forward to seeing friends at work, going out to lunch, getting coffee, being in meetings together, and having impromptu hallway conversations.

Setting and measuring goals

The 7 most important KPIs to measure the success of UX research

By Mohsin Khan

Discover how to measure the success of your user research with these 7 essential KPIs. KPIs or Key Performance Indicators, give you a quantitative way to measure progress over time, see if the goals are being met, and analyze whether changes need to be made.

Tools and approaches for teams

Tune up your next workshop by tuning into yourself

By Jackie Colburn

The thing about showing up to facilitate and guide people is that our ability to lead relies heavily on our ability to show up for ourselves first and foremost.

Stop sucking the silence out of your meetings

By Ruchi Parchar

Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist tweets, “The loudest voices rarely represent the majority. They are usually speaking for the extremes. You won’t understand the views of a group until you’ve invited the quieter voices into the discussion. Don’t mistake silence for disengagement.

Healthy Boundaries

By Spotify Design Team

As a designer, setting boundaries at work can give you space to let creativity flow. But it's not always easy to do. From saying yes to less to scheduling moments of self-reflection, three Spotifiers tell us how they set boundaries and find balance.

Other things

Stop Ghosting and Start Saying No

By Mita Mallick

I’ve been ghosted more times than I can count. There was that time a senior leader enthusiastically offered to introduce me to the chief marketing officer of one of the largest tech firms. That never happened.

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