🤿 Montessori, Headcount Tracking, Managing Work, Managing Emotions, Dark Debt, Shape Up: TMW #258 by CTO Craft
Hello there!
It's been a little while since we asked the CTO Craft members and TMW subscribers to tell us a little about themselves - it's very important for us to understand who you all are and what you're working on, so we can build content, events and resources that fit you best. We've put together a completely anonymous and confidential survey that we'd be incredibly grateful if you could complete - it shouldn't take more than a few minutes
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Thanks so much in advance - the results of this will help us keep creating amazing resources for all of the 8,000 or so CTOs and leaders in the CTO Craft group.
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On with the links!
Andy @ CTO Craft
CTO Craft Community Survey March 2022
Can you spare 5 minutes to let us know more about you and your team please?
CTO Craft Bytes
What Leaders Can Learn From the Montessori Method, Fri 25 Mar 2022 at 12:30pm GMT
How can a framework that treats children like adults help you make the right decisions in the workplace? Many leaders struggle to create autonomous teams and let go of controlling behaviours.
We will look at the principles of the Montessori approach to see what we can learn that can help us promote autonomy while being supportive.
Reads of the Week
Headcount Tracking for a Medium Sized Org using a Spreadsheet
While the simple question of “how many people work here?” should be easy to answer, even slightly more nuanced questions like “who is on which team?”, or “how many people have we hired that have not started yet on these three teams?” can quickly turn into one-off manual fact finding and
Convincing Teams to Stay during Times of Change
You’re in the middle of a change initiative, and you know it’s going to be challenging: your team will have to learn new skills, navigate the unknown, and tolerate the discomfort and loss that come with change. So how do you convince them to stay when they have other options?
From our Partners
Leveling Up Your Team Through Data-Driven Performance Reviews - from Code Climate
Leveraging objective data in your reviews can improve retention, mitigate bias, and positively impact developer confidence. Find out how in Code Climate's recent webinar, Leveling Up Your Team Through Data-Driven Performance Reviews
About our Partners
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Culture & People
Run This Diagnostic to Thoughtfully Build (and Evaluate) Your Startup’s Culture
There are tons of reads on why company culture matters, but few on how to actually architect it. And it’s rarely examined at the co-founding duo, 5-person team, or 30-person startup level. Laura Del Beccaro aims to change that by sharing this 3-step framework she’s leaned on while building Sora.
Managing Work Over Managing People
What is ethos? Where does it come from? Why does it matter? Behind your strategy, purpose, brand and even your culture is something even more enduring. Foundational DNA that your business is built on. That something is your ethos.
Managing Emotions in the Workplace: Do Positive and Negative Attitudes Drive Performance?
You know the type: coworkers who never have anything positive to say, whether at the weekly staff meeting or in the cafeteria line. They can suck the energy from a brainstorming session with a few choice comments. Their bad mood frequently puts others in one, too.
How to personalise leadership development for frontline managers
I read somewhere recently that 80 percent of an organisation’s workforce are managed by frontline managers. That is a lot of employees! What is not good is to ignore investing in your frontline managers.
Leadership & Self-management
Hard to work with.
Managing teams has taught me a lot about my own behaviors and motivations. For example, I overworked for a long time. This left me continually teetering on the brink of burnout, and I had no energy left to absorb the typical sorts of organizational changes that happen at any company.
CTO last day: reflections, mistakes, and some learnings
In April 2021, I left my job at Akvo as CTO, after about two years in the position. Today, six seven eight nine ten months later, it seems like about time to stop procrastinating and write something about it.
7 Mental Models For Great Engineering Leadership
A couple of weeks ago, I hosted a talk with Point Nine, where I presented what I believe are the essential building blocks of great engineering leadership.
Levels of Technical Leadership
This document describes why and how a tech company can offer a career path to its engineering technical leaders, that is, different tracks for “deep ICs” versus “broad ICs”.
Agile, Engineering & Product
Technical Debt’s Hidden Cousin: Dark Debt
Metaphors help us navigate the shadow-lands of software systems by giving us mental waypoints and handholds that keep us focussed on the right problem to solve at the right time.
From Scrum to Shipping Work that Matters with Shape Ups
Shape Up is a framework for running product development teams by collaboration and productivity company Basecamp. Shape-Ups focus heavily on execution and shipping features or products. In very simplified terms, Shape-Upping divides into three parts: Shaping, Betting and Building.
The Five Anti-patterns of Estimating User Stories
As part of my assessment, I consistently observed five anti-patterns common amongst the Scrum teams in both enterprise and start-up environments. Unfortunately these anti-patterns are not unique as I’ve observed them with other teams and I’ve coached teams in overcoming these obstacles.
That’s it!
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Have an amazing week!
Andy