Posts from Awesome Folks #52

A weekly round up of blog posts I've been reading

Author

Emily Webber
March 10, 2023

Hello,

My part of the world (the NW of England) woke up to white carpets of snow this morning, brrrrrrr; this is not the spring I had in mind; I should be enjoying early runs with the sun gently guiding my way by now; I hope the daffodils in the park hold up.

This week I co-ran the first Agile Liverpool that wasn’t in the pub, and despite the drop in temperature, we had a good turnout and it was great fun. I love when a community is starting out, and it’s small enough for everyone to be involved in the discussion and really get to know each other. I kept it very interactive and conversational to help foster those connections. I also got to try out a new technique (See the link to the Capability Comb in the Tools and Approaches for teams section below).

It was also international women’s day this week; I like to read and promote as many diverse voices as I can in this newsletter throughout the year. You may have noticed; you may have not and just seen the awesome posts; I hope that sharing them has had a small impact on what others read.

Happy reading

Emily

People and Culture

Cultivating Diverse Teams Will Help Us Build A Better World Of Work

Experienced operations specialist, Susan Nolan, shares her ideas for how we can build a better world of work.

Finn Bartram

peoplemanagingpeople.com/interviews/babwow-susan-nolan

Become More Comfortable Making Bold Decisions

Leaps of faith make great scenes in a movie, but in real life they fill us with stress and uncertainty, two emotions that are not comfortable for the human brain. To face down our discomfort, we can take advantage of a revealing data set that we often ignore: our past decisions.

By Cheryl Strauss Einhorn

hbr.org/2023/03/become-more-comfortable-making-bold-decisions

Recognition and rewards at work | Lara Hogan

“What we recognize is what we reward.” I first heard someone say this in 2013. My leadership team was deep in a heated discussion about how to get more engineers to consider mobile web when building out new features. An absolute given now, it wasn’t then.

By Lara Hogan

larahogan.me/blog/what-you-recognize-and-reward

Organisations and Systems

Jade Rubick - High trust and low trust organizations

Comparison of the differences between high trust and low trust organizations.

By Jade Rubick

www.rubick.com/high-trust-low-trust-organizations

The Other Digital Divide — Out of Owls

There’s another Digital Divide - one that we impose upon ourselves. If you’ve ever been on a product development team and talked about what “the business” wants, you’ve experienced it. Or if you’ve ever complained about waiting for “IT to deliver the requirements.”

By Randy Silver

outofowls.com/blog/2023/3/6/the-other-digital-divide

A Desk Is a Dangerous Place From Which to Watch the World

This article is a reproduction of an article published in HindSight magazine issue 28 in February 2019 on the theme of ‘Change’ (all issues available at SKYbrary) Some years ago, I was …

By Steven Shorrock

humanisticsystems.com/2023/03/06/a-desk-is-a-dangerous-place-from-which-to-watch-the-world

7 ways to use the Enterprise Change Pattern | AWA Global

Unsure how to use the Enterprise Change Pattern? In this article, we share 7 ways in which the Enterprise Change Pattern can help your organisation.

By Gude Hudson-Gool

www.adventureswithagile.com/2023/03/07/how-to-use-the-enterprise-change-pattern

Tools and Approaches for Teams

Team exercise: Building empathy and understanding with the Capability Comb

In my recent post, Why Can’t we all get Along, I discussed the value of overlapping roles in multi/inter/transdisciplinary teams and referred to using the broken comb shape to describe skills and capabilities. In this post, I’ll expand on that theory and add an approach for using it to help teams build empathy, understanding and opportunities for collaboration and contributions.

By Emily Webber

emilywebber.co.uk/team-exercise-building-empathy-and-understanding-with-the-capability-comb

The Unstuck Meeting: A safe failure space

On my team, we have "unstuck" meetings. When anyone gets stuck on a task, rather than fester they book the rest of us for 30 minutes to talk through their problem. Using "unstuck" in the title immediately tells the rest of us that we have no prep to do and we're there to help.

Tanya Snook

www.spydergrrl.com/2019/08/the-unstuck-meeting-safe-failure-space.html

Talking to customers is not a waste of a developer's time

Everyone should talk to customers. Most companies buy the idea. They also believe it's a waste of time with developers. Here's why they're wrong.

By Jeff Gothelf

jeffgothelf.com/blog/talking-to-customers-is-not-a-waste-of-a-developers-time

Other Things

8 exceptional #mtpcon talks by women in product

In celebration of International Women’s Day, we look at some of the women who have taken to the #mtpcon stage over the past few years.

www.mindtheproduct.com/8-exceptional-mtpcon-talks-by-women-in-product