TWH#S1: What I Read This Week

The Sunday Edition #1

As a result of the recent poll and as promised in last Thursday’s regular issue of The Hagakure, from now on I’ll be sending an extra edition — The Sunday Edition — with the best of what I read this past week. Hope you enjoy it, and please let me know the best of what YOU read!

Photo by Raimond Klavins on Unsplash

✍️ Punching Above your Weight

(Francisco Trindade • 3 min read)

Succint advice on how small engineering teams can achieve big results. It suggests keeping technology and infrastructure simple, having generalists rather than specialists on the team, building less code and iteratively, investing in finding problems early in the cycle, and limiting analysis but not eliminating it. Ultimately, small teams can achieve big results with the right strategies in place.

✍️ It’s time to teach empathy and trust with the same rigor as we teach coding

(Fast Company • 4 min read)

I couldn’t agree more with the importance of teaching employees soft skills, such as empathy and trust, with the same rigor as hard skills, such as coding. This article describes a program created by three leadership experts that has had positive results when implemented in Fortune 500 companies. It emphasizes that teaching soft skills requires long-term practice and group work, and that it needs to be well-supported in order to have lasting effects.

✍️ A Framework for Prioritizing Tech Debt

(Max Countryman • 4 min read)

A framework that provides a structured view of technical debt, allowing for the identification of "good" and "bad" debt, and a way to decide how to address it. Leverage is a powerful tool for startups, and technical debt is a kind of leverage that can be beneficial.

✍️ Curated Consumption: A Saner Approach to Online Media

(Scott H. Young • 2 min read)

Scott suggests that a curated newsfeed is a better approach to online media than using algorithms, as it requires more work to find content, but is a more sane way to consume it. I definitely subscribe to that notion. He also suggests that using an algorithm can lead to a Skinner box-like cycle of consuming largely junk content, and only occasionally finding gems. Ignore Scott’s advice at your own peril.

✍️ The Rise of Autonomous Organizations: The End of the Middle Manager?

(Corporate Rebels • 14 min read)

The rise of Autonomous Organizations is predicted to replace traditional hierarchical ways of organizing, and this shift is based on Professor Alan Fiske's "Relational Models" theory, which states that all people are motivated to coordinate their activities through four fundamental relational models: Authority Ranking, Communal Sharing, Equality Matching, and Market Pricing. These models are guided by four moral motives: Hierarchy, Proportionality, Equality, and Unity. Autonomous Organizations rely on these relational models to coordinate work instead of relying on a Ranking mode, which is the predominant mode in traditional hierarchical organizations. Practical examples of Autonomous Organizations in each of the three non-hierarchical modes are given, with a focus on Pricing, Matching, and Sharing modes. Sounds more complicated than it is—and a great read, too.

Thanks for reading and clicking. Have a great week!