⛑ Product/Engineering Tension, Losing Clout, ADHD, Storytelling, Micromanagement, Predictable Agile: TMW #248 by CTO Craft
Hello again!
Welcome to 2022 - I hope the year's started positively for you, and that you came back refreshed and ready for the new year.
We've got a lot coming up in 2022, beginning with the first Bytes of the year, both next week on Tuesday and Friday, on product/engineering tension and diversity and inclusion respectively. Wholeheartedly recommend attending these if either subject is on your mind, or if you'd like to learn more about how businesses are dealing with both crucial challenges. There'll be chatter and networking in both events as well to continue the conversation.
There are a number of Mentoring Circles and 1:1 Coaching initiatives in the works - if you'd like to discuss how we can support you in your growth and help resolve any challenges you're facing in your leadership role, drop me a reply here, or shout on Slack. We're here to help you.
That's it, on with the links! See you next week
Andy @ CTO Craft
CTO Craft Bytes
Unpacking the Tension Between Product and Engineering Teams - Tue 18 Jan 2022 at 12:30 GMT
What’s the best way to resolve this tension so that Product and Engineering teams don’t “butt heads”? Sergey Soloviov and Sarah Hale have both been in the middle of this tension as Engineering leaders.
Diversity & Inclusion Strategy - Fri 21 Jan 2022 at 12:30 GMT
It's so important that businesses really invest in Diversity & Inclusion, but many companies don't take it seriously or imbed it in the core of their businesses strategy. Join this panel to hear how different companies have addressed this and get some pointers on where to start. We will discuss practical ways that can impact your organisation and positively affect your tech teams.
Reads of the Week
When Startup CTOs Lose Clout
Many of my clients are founders and cofounders of tech startups. These aren’t baby startups, but companies that have gained some traction, raised some money and are several years into operating. They have significant teams.
The Continuous Integration Approach to Engineering Leadership
Lena Reinhard discusses how to create a culture of visibility and accountability, practical tips for leading to effectively set goals, and CI-based leadership frameworks that create faster feedback loops.
From our Partners
How to Realistically Scale Product Delivery in 2022 - from 101 Ways
Tech leaders can often struggle to plan for the effective scaling of product delivery, misaligning scaling from a product delivery standpoint with the overall organisational strategies and goals.
Here we have detailed 4 key steps that can help align these different activities, while also providing specific strategies that can be implemented today.
About our Partners
A huge, huge thanks to our partners for supporting CTO Craft in 2021 - you’re all amazing!
AWS, Albany Partners, CircleCI, Indiespring, Karat, LinearB, Lohika, 101 Ways, O’Reilly, PGS Software, Skiller Whale, Steamhaus, Swarmia, The Software House, iTechArt
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Culture & People
ADHD Accommodations Guide
Employer If you’re an employer looking for ways to help your employee with ADHD perform better, you may want to visit the following pages: Below is a non-exhaustive list of accommodations many adults with ADHD have found helpful.
12 Leading Storytelling Strategies for 2022
Stories Incorporated’s Stories of the Year provide actionable examples of leading storytelling strategies.
How to Become A Self-Managing Team
Organizations worldwide are steadily realizing the need for a serious upgrade in the way they work—and interest in self-management is skyrocketing as a result. In this post, I'll share some of the wisdom we picked up during our visits to some of the world's leading self-managing organizations.
Carol Dweck: A Summary of Growth and Fixed Mindsets
There are two main mindsets we can navigate life with: growth and fixed. Having a growth mindset is essential for success. In this post, we explore how to develop the right mindset for improving your intelligence. Carol Dweck studies human motivation.
Leadership & Self-management
Are You A Micromanager? How to delegate and learn to trust your team
Effective leadership is difficult, and falling into possibly toxic traits can be hard to avoid. Learning to delegate and trusting your team are the stepping stones to achieving effective leadership, without these foundations, leaders often find themselves in situations of micromanagement.
Be Plainspoken
It takes practice to communicate well. Being a great writer or communicator is a kind of superpower that makes nearly every aspect of your life easier. But with great power comes great responsibility; the clarifying power of language can also be used to confound.
How to Make Sense of Conflicting Feedback on Your Leadership
I recently sat with an executive, we’ll call him Mark, to review his comprehensive feedback report, which comprised nearly 25 interviews with critical stakeholders. While most feedback contains some contradictory data, in his case, the differences were extreme.
In A World That Values Optimism, When Should A Leader Be A Pessimist?
The reality is, there are times when a leader must be a grim-faced pessimist, while in other times it requires being a cheery-faced optimist. How do you know? Here’s a basic guideline to help you navigate this.
Agile, Engineering & Product
Hunting Tech Debt via Org Charts
After a couple years in government I used to blow peoples’ minds with a fairly simple party trick. Before going into our first meeting with a new agency stakeholder I would predict several key details of what their problems were going to be.
Measuring Software Complexity: What Metrics to Use?
This was Dave, your colleague developer, arguing in another never-ending meeting to rewrite a part of your company’s codebase. His arguments? Technical debt, high entropy, and the fear of the legacy system.
How to Measure the Predictability of Agile
When I begin working with an organisation on the agile transformation, an early conversation is around successful outcomes. My work on Strategy Deployment is all about answering the question “how do I know if agile is working?“
That’s it!
If you’d like to be considered for the free CTO Craft Community, fill in your details here, and we’ll be in touch!
https://ctocraft.com/community
Please do remember to share this link if you know of anyone who’d like to receive TMW:
Have an amazing week!
Andy