The Weekly Hagakure #19
"Why should we do this?"
Sometimes I wonder how radically different the world would be if some things were true.
There's a few obvious ones (no discrimination, equal opportunity…) but when it comes to the world of work and tech companies in particular, I keep coming back to what John Cutler just recently put very elegantly:
Ideas, no matter how good or well intended, are infinitely easier to drop into a roadmap than to be implemented, rolled out and measured.
What would a tech world where the question "why should we do this?" is asked and taken constructively… look like?
3 Articles
✍️ Expiring vs. Permanent Skills
Investing may not be a subject you'd expect to see in this newsletter. But the reality is that a lot of what underpins successful investing is also what underpins successful technical leadership and building enduring companies. I'm a big fan of Morgan Housel's writing on the psychology of investing, and this recent piece on permanent skills is a must.
✍️ Best Practices for Setting SLOs and SLIs For Modern, Complex Systems
Reliability work vs. engineering velocity: how to decide? And what's acceptable systems performance? In a blog post recommended for any tech leader, Elisa Binette, Director of Engineering at NewRelic, describes how the Site Reliability Engineering concepts of SLI and SLO can help engineering teams make such decisions, while significantly increasing understanding of their systems.
There's very few things I like to prescribe to my teams, but I'm completely with Tim Casasola on this: retrospectives are one of them. Continuous improvement is the backbone of "being agile" and learning as a team, through retrospectives, is the engine of that. The post also includes some interesting tools to help running effective retrospectives.
2 Videos
This week’s two video choices fall under the same themes: motivation, helping others lead with their best selves and, ultimately, world-class performance. And because they also speak for themselves, I’ll refrain from my usual commentary, urging you instead to spend a few quality minutes watching them.
📺 "Greatness" by David Marquet
📺 Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us
1 Book
📚 The Culture Code, by Daniel Coyle
One thing I learned in my personal journey of Engineering leadership is that it’s not enough to do the work. As leaders, it is absolutely our responsibility to create the conditions for those doing the work to be excellent. And we must be accountable for doing so.
This takes us down all sorts of rabbit holes, a lot of them fascinating, others full of peril. No wonder — we, the people, are beautiful snowflakes. We barely know how to operate ourselves, let alone working productively with others.
Sadly, although my career ultimately represents a very small sample size of companies (even when adding companies I know through friends and acquaintances), my experience tells me that managers and leaders who understand that outcomes are a consequence of a great environment (some call it culture) are the exception, not the norm.
So the question is: what does a great environment look like… and how can I help create one?
Getting to a good answer for that question is something for which I consider Daniel Coyle’s The Culture Code to be required reading. Despite the title, it won’t give you a simple “cheat code” to build a great, enduring organization. What it does do is strip away the bullshit, zooming in on three core capabilities of leaders of healthy teams:
Build Safety. “In this team, we feel safe and connected. We can speak up and we help each other out.”
Share Vulnerability. “We feel we can make mistakes and not feel small because of it. We take risks and shoot for the stars — sometimes achieve something incredible because of that.”
Establish Purpose. “We are all connected working towards something we believe in that is bigger than ourselves.”
As a journalist by trade, Coyle tells a number of compelling stories of organizations — and their respective leaders — whose success rests on these pillars. While there’s a lot to be said (and done) to actually implementing a culture like this, unfortunately too many companies don’t even try. And I can only think of a) how much people potential is getting squandered, and b) how much business upside is lost due to a lack of focus on creating the conditions for individuals and teams to thrive.
What would the world look like if this opportunity cost was measurable in crisp, clear numbers? I challenge you to pause for a minute and consider the (many) implications of that.
It never fails to blow my mind.
🙌🏽 Thank you for reading! Enjoyed this week’s edition? Have feedback on how I can make this more valuable to you? I’d love to hear it — my DMs are open on Twitter or just write a comment below.
✍️ Find some of my own ramblings on tech and org stuff over at The Evolutionary Manager.
👉 You can also follow me on Twitter @prla
just to mention that this article just helped me to answer a wonderful board administration email! thanks :-)