Short-form insights you can read in under 5 minutes.
A concept I embrace in building a sustainable business that considers its impact for harm or good. “knowledge creation is a synthesizing process through which organizations interact with individuals and the environment to transcend emerging paradoxes” - Takeuchi & Nonaka
Takeaways from Adam Grant’s “Give and Take”: Change people’s behavior and attitudes might follow - the reverse is less likely. Calling people givers lends them permission to give less. Takers can be very successful. But givers can also be very successful. So that’s not an excuse.
After hearing Margaret Seidler discuss Polarity Management for Truth and Reconciliation, I’m seeing its potential smaller ways in our work in software teams: practice excellence | access to opportunity, sustained value | shipping features, architectural coherence | individual autonomy. All about the AND’s not the OR’s.
Some reasons leading change is hard: You will need more time, luck, and help then you think. You’ll have to change as much as anyone else. People won’t understand what you’re doing and will value what exists. They will have a point. Oh - privilege, power, and resources really help.
Way to go Jonah Bailey! I’ve learned so much talking to both you and Jeff Williams. Well deserved for you and your company.
Yeah, I’m that lucky that as a software guy, I’ve gotten to work with some amazing people in media and journalism. Congratulations!
Outcome and impact focused thinking (like Agile Fluency and Jeff Patton / Jeff Gothelf lean product) has taught me to be skeptical of maturity models. But I keep seeing them. What complex human system can be meaningfully described as having linear step progressions from objectively worse to better?
Build a place where we support and develop each other into leaders and happy people really good at what we do, so we can compete for work with companies governing their businesses well, treating people humanely, and creating a net benefit to ecology and society
A team changed from Scrum to Kanban because, “Planning took too long.” Are they shipping faster? Are they taking less time context sharing or did they just cut waste they could have anyway? Do they know? If not, they’ve just called what they’re not doing by a different name.
A BuiltIn interview discussing why Stride Consulting is expanding our hiring outside NYC, starting with Chicago.
Really impressed by this engineering and science segment on BBC. Bridge building in steel using 3D printing technology. Scientists using ML to survey biodiversity in forests. They describe the ML techniques and the evolutionary theory of aural spread in an ecosystem that makes it relevant. Maybe we’d be likelier to survive the next century if we stopped taking a “Gully gee, ROBOTS!” approach to mass media technology reporting.
It’s not that every technology and business student should be learning how collaboration, team work, and a giving mindset contribute to a meaningful career. I just wish more of them were.