What Does It Mean to Be Strategic?
What does it mean to be strategic? Through my experience of leading engineering organizations at Google, both as a tech lead and manager, the word “strategy” and the need to “be strategic” came up a lot across technical, product, and organizational contexts. Yet clearly defining what either might mean and consistently delivering on both has been challenging.
^ADJ: This would have to be one of my favourite articles; the word strategy, in my opinion, is often misused. Now sometimes this is by mistake, sometimes by design. The framework used by Richard Rumelt is practical and I particularly like the distinction between steps 3 and 4:
Devising a guiding policy answers this question, allowing us to arrive at the approach. Then, we move onto the next question: “How will we do it?” At this step, we come up with a coherent set of actions. Finally, something we can do! As we observe ourselves taking these actions, we ask ourselves: “What are the outcomes?”
Recommended Read: Good Strategy / Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
How to write an Amazon-style narrative memo
In 2004 Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint inside Amazon, and replaced them with 4-page memos (later expanded to 6-page memos).
^ADJ: The art of writing a good memo has been almost lost to a generation, could we see a turning point with the want to have less meetings,
To Improve Your Team, First Work on Yourself
If a team is not working well together, it’s highly likely that each person is contributing to the difficulty in some way. The odds of improving the team dynamic in a meaningful and sustainable will be higher if everyone — including the leader — learns to master three foundational capabilities: internal self-awareness, external self-awareness, and personal accountability
New Research Reveals People Who Don't Make Constant Eye Contact
^ADJ: New research gives a new perspective on eye contact (or lack of it).
How to spend your first 30 days in a new senior-level role
You’ve started in a new role: congrats! Throughout my years as a coach, I’ve seen lots of my clients land in a new leadership role as a director or above, and make a well-intentioned but enormous mistake: they make a big change within their organization before building up trust with their teams.
^ADJ: Some great tips in this article, especially thinking about communication flows.