- Posts from Awesome Folks
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- Posts from Awesome Folks #28
Posts from Awesome Folks #28
Emily Webber
September 16, 2022
Hello folks,
Now, where did that week go?
It's been a busy week for work and for bloggers, as people head back to work after the summer, brimming with ideas to share. There is so much to read that I will keep the introduction brief to give you some time to read the ones that pique your interest.
Don't forget to give me a little thumbs up if you enjoy this collection.
Happy reading and happy Friday
Emily
People and culture
Making a Case for the Humble Check-In Round
By Lucy Ellis
Small shifts can have big impacts.
The IKEA Effect - Why people fall in love with their own ideas
By Howie Mann
The IKEA effect describes how people come to overvalue things in which they have successfully put effort into. This cognitive bias can pose risks to organisations in the form of sunk cost effects and “not invented here” syndrome.
Rerun: Building communities that work – Emily Webber on The Product Experience
By The Product Experience
It can be tough, even at the best of times, to remain engaged at work – to find a community of people to share with and learn from. Emily Webber’s seen this in action and has started (and nurtured) successful communities both at work and at home.
High-Performing Teams Don’t Leave Relationships to Chance
By Ron Friedman
At first glance, workplace friendships can seem trivial — a nice to have that’s distinct from traditional organizational objectives like productivity, efficiency, and profitability. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Organisations and systems
Guiding principle: Think Big, Work Small
By Jason Yip
Guiding principle in effective product development culture. Thanks to John Cutler for the pithiest wording I’ve seen so far to describe this phenomenon.
Systems thinking in the real world: examples from healthcare
By Houdita Bonita
If you are reading this, you are probably intrigued by the possibility of looking at problems in new ways. You might be wondering what systems thinking is all about, and whether it is worth exploring.
Distribute Work Into Autonomous Roles
By Emma de Blok
Today, we’re launching a new Corporate Rebels Academy course: “Distribute Work into Autonomous Roles.” It’s a practical, no-nonsense course that explains why outdated job descriptions don’t work and offers a much better way to get things done: distributing work into autonomous roles.
Setting and measuring goals
Good OKRs, Bad OKRs
By Christina Wodtke
I spoke at Dan Olsen’s Lean Product Meetup last night. Below are the slides. I’ll update this with the video when it’s ready!
Systematic decision-making and extreme clarity
By Natalie Shaw
I’m publishing something that I used throughout my 6.5 years at Meta. It transformed how I approach decision-making during moments of crisis — and beyond.
Top 10 Books on Lean Management, Lean Production, And Toyota History
By Katie Anderson
If you’re a leader or continuous improvement practitioner who is committed to learning and you’re trying to create a learning organization, then you are likely someone who is interested in lean management, the Toyota Way, and the Toyota production system.
The Truth Curve
By Jeff Gothelf
Experimentation has always been a challenge for teams. Even teams who have experience writing hypotheses and designing experiments struggle to spend the “right” amount of effort on their learning. Spend too little and you risk wasting a cycle and not learning much.
Tools and approaches for teams
Ask Christina: Personalities and Roles
By Christina Wodtke
How do you account for personality (or do you?) in leading and participating in teams? Those darn humans! Seriously, one of the bigger mistakes managers is treating people as if they were interchangeable for any given role on any team.
Should every team be cross-functional?
By Chris Combe
TL;DR: It depends, either way — they should be moving closer to the product and / or the customer. One such topic was the notion of x-in-a-box teams, where the x represents a profession, a team can be composed of.
Create More Management Ease with Continuous Flow and Lower WIP: Aging First
By Johanna Rothman
Most managers I see feel a ton of pressure for delivery. The managers need to “deliver” more projects, products, and features. That pressure rolls down to the teams. Too often, the team hears, “Can you just do a little more?” That often leads to the so-called “quiet quitting” problem.
Other things
Content design: 5 things that can hurt comprehension and readability in difficult moments
By Natalie Shaw
Like many content designers, I learned my trade while working at the Government Digital Service on the launch of GOV.UK back in 2012.
