Insights on leadership, technology, and human-centered strategy, originally shared on LinkedIn and expanded for deeper exploration.
I appreciate what a privilege it is to have choices in what we do and who we work with. But to the degree we can, it’s also a responsibility to foster better conditions and outcomes for the people with and around us.
In work or school, punishing a team for mistakes without granting them the authority to self-organize and make their own commitments is an abuse. If the team succeeds, it is in spite of their leaders who will likely take credit for it.
A healthy profit margin is important. It’s not just a convenient excuse. That doesn’t, however, absolve a company and its people of accountability for their actions. We are trying to acknowledge both truths and obtain the benefits of both without sacrificing one for the other.
TechEquity Collaborative’s Contract Worker Disparity Project describes the pitfalls of a dual management structure. This is, in part, why we are shifting away from augmenting teams to delivering software in Stride teams and specific org change outcomes. https://buff.ly/3I0mFpO
If you and your organization treat people with respect, value psychological safety and learning, appreciate the difference between team work and a bunch of people handing work off to each other. Keep it up please!
There’s logical consistency in business leadership accountability and fostering cross functional, self-organizing teams. My accountability is to ensure our teams’ sustained creativity and effectiveness while personally embodying our shared values.
That entails providing direction (not instruction), information transparency, psychological safety, requisite diversity, learning and development support, access to the customer, autonomy to arrive at their own shared goals, and my earning and maintaining trust by listening and removing obstacles.
We exist in a world of ethical consequences not the virtue of our intentions. We are not heroes and villains. We are flawed people who are capable of taking accountability for the harm and good we foster directly and indirectly through our actions.
In my career, I’ve learned to focus on an outcome I can influence and that I care about - building craft or helping people (coworkers, customers) - shape that into a purpose and measure achievement against it. I’ve had the privilege and luck to be rewarded for it.
Operating and growing a values and purpose guided organization is the biggest opportunity for personal growth in my career. Fortunately, our company is populated with truly brilliant, empathetic people and were doing it together. Mistakes aplenty but our time to learn is a force.
This is a gray area but in this particular case I feel the crime involved didn’t rise to the urgency where it outweighs the damage to trust in the contact tracing app.
“…men had the same outcomes regardless …women experienced better outcomes if the procedure had been performed by a female surgeon…
This result has real-world medical consequences for female patients… more complications, readmissions and death…”
No way to “predict” the specifics of omicron but as far as the trends: 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic came in three surges. https://buff.ly/3aKJBbJ