Posts from Awesome Folks #53

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

Author

Emily Webber
March 17, 2023

Hello,

This week, I have been doing lots of interviews with people to understand their worlds. Listening to what people in an organisation have to say is an important part of any new piece of work, and the insights gained are vital to identifying opportunities. I love getting to hear different perspectives, experiences and approaches, which vary so much in different organisations and sometimes within them.

I also published a new template in the Miroverse with the wonderful Jamie Arnold. It’s called Five Questions to Measure Success, also linked below in Setting and Measuring Goals. It’s a build on top of some questions we wrote down 5 years ago, so it’s great to finally be able to put more structure and a Miro board around it. If you use it, please let us know how it goes.

Happy Friday, and enjoy this week’s links.

Emily

People and Culture

Remote workers are adopting a new practice called ‘body doubling,’ in which they watch strangers work online

Body doubling helps some ADHD workers be more productive and provides lonely workers with a sense of community.

By Chloe Berger

finance.yahoo.com/news/remote-workers-adopting-practice-called-133000615.html

The Toxic Culture Gap Shows Companies Are Failing Women

Employers must recognize that women are 41% more likely to experience toxic culture in the workplace than men are.

By Donald Sull and Charles Sull

sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-toxic-culture-gap-shows-companies-are-failing-women

Creating inclusion and safety through check-in questions

As I’m looking out for my next role to help build high-performing psychologically safe teams I wanted to share my experience of the power…

By Rachael Shah

rachaelashah.medium.com/creating-inclusion-and-safety-through-check-in-questions-e857c327666e

Organisations and Systems

TBM 205: "Process" vs. Systems & Habits

Sunday morning musings… Team A writes a 1-pager as part of a heavyweight annual planning process. No 1-pager, no budget. Hurry! Hurry! The leadership team has a hundred 1-pagers to review! Be first in line! What have you got? Does this fall into investment bucket 1 or 2? Hurry!

By John Cutler

cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-205-process-vs-systems-and-habits

HH 003 - Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, Adjourning

“Quotability may be the key to success,” is what Bruce Tuckman said about the Stages of Group Development “Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing” in his 1965 paper “Developmental Sequence in Small Groups.” The first four stages, Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, arose as Tuckman synthesized findings from his literature review of 50ish studies on groups. In 1977, he had a follow up paper coauthored by Mary Ann C. Jensen in which they reviewed 20 more papers and added the final stage, Adjourning, to complete the model with, as Tuckman himself referred to as imperfect rhyming.

By Heidi Helfand

heidihelfand.substack.com/p/hh003-forming-storming-norming-performing

Setting and Measuring Goals

Five Questions to Measure Success

These 5 questions will help a team focus on outcomes over outputs, align on what success looks like and identify ways to measure it.

By Emily Webber with Jamie Arnold

emilywebber.co.uk/five-questions-to-measure-success

Case Study: How product management saved Fender guitars

There are no short cuts to product success. This case study shows how Fender guitars used solid product management work to discover and define a winning, modern product strategy.

By Jeff Gothelf

jeffgothelf.com/blog/how-product-management-saved-fender-guitars

Tools and Approaches for Teams

Tips for successful stakeholder management

How successful stakeholder management and engagement can turn good product managers into great product managers

By Eira Hayward

www.mindtheproduct.com/tips-for-successful-stakeholder-management

Other Things

Stop saying “technical debt”

Everyone who says "tech debt" assumes they know what we’re all talking about, but their individual pictures differ quite a bit.

By Chelsea Troy

stackoverflow.blog/2023/02/27/stop-saying-technical-debt

Agile is not working: the IT industry is a “patchwork of contradictions and confusions”

Agile is past its rebel teenage years and are well into adulthood with all the responsibility and seriousness that entails. It has become table stakes in the IT industry and one would expect it to be respected and revered as the best way of organising and doing software development.

By Trond Hjorteland

www.linkedin.com/pulse/agile-working-industry-patchwork-contradictions-trond-hjorteland