Sign in Subscribe
8 min read

🩐 Selling for CTOs, Leadership Styles, Problem Solving, Storytelling, Feature Team Fallacy, Complicated Software, Positive Influence: TMW #355

đŸ€–
Thanks to 101 Ways for sponsoring this issue of Tech Manager Weekly - a consultancy helping leaders solve challenging problem and build great digital products.

Hello again, welcome to the week!

With only one week left until we open the doors at CTO Craft Con: Culture and the CTO, ticket availability is now in the single digits! If you'd like to come along, don't forget to use the code "Community-Nov-23" to enable the community discounted ticket price. We'd love to see you there!

Resilience vs Stupidity

In one of the Circle sessions recently, we dedicated a large part of the conversation to knowing your limits, and the point at which resilience morphs into stupidity. The group looked at the subject from many angles, including how they're currently feeling about their roles and whether there's a scientific approach to knowing when to move on. In a time where stress levels are very high across the industry, it's not surprising that there's a lot of fear about making the wrong decision - we covered themes like self-doubt in decision making, making sense of the fear of what the future holds if you make the wrong call and how to weigh up the pros and cons of sticking it out.

If you're looking for support in making a big career decision like this, do drop me a line - I'm happy to help.

That's it, until next week! On with the links..

Andy @ CTO Craft

Introducing Campus: Your transformative learning platform designed by CTOs | CTO Craft
Introducing Campus, a transformative learning platform for tech leaders, integrating various tools to unlock potential.
CTO CraftSarah Haselwood

CTO Craft Events

CTO Craft Con: Culture and the CTO | London 7-8 November
CTO Craft Con will bring together over 250 Chief Technology Officers and other senior technology leaders from the most exciting start-ups, scale-ups, unicorns, and big tech companies to elevate their engineering culture in London, 7-8 November 2023.
CTO Craft Con November 2023
CTO Craft Bytes: Sorry - Sales is part of the CTO role
In this Bytes session, we will discuss strategies and best practices to understand your sales role as a CTO or technical leader.
Eventbrite
CTO Craft: Manchester Mixer
Network and learn with fellow CTO Craft members at The Old Monkey pub in Manchester.
Eventbrite
CTO Craft: Dublin Mixer
Network and learn with fellow CTOs, CTO Craft community members and aspiring tech leaders in Dublin, Ireland
Eventbrite

Reads of the Week

Developing leadership styles
For a long time, I found the micromanager CEO archetype very frustrating to work with. They would often pop out of nowhere, jab holes in the work I had done without understanding the tradeoffs, and then disappear when I wanted to explain my decisions. In those moments, I wished they would trust me b

Irrational Exuberance

From our Sponsors

[From 101 Ways] "Is It Time to Retire Digital Transformation?" On Demand Webinar

Names do matter and "digital transformation" is one that shows little sign of going away. For many tech teams, this can be a problem. Calling something a transformation raises a particular set of expectations in senior management circles. It can also encourage an old school approach to budgeting, planning and delivery that could be detrimental to the project and its outcome. We think it’s time to retire digital transformation. What do you think?

Watch our latest webinar where we explore the advantages of embracing a new mindset and provide a comprehensive 5-step plan to empower tech leaders in its implementation including an expert panel discussion.

Watch the Webinar

Thanks as always to all the amazing sponsors helping CTO Craft bring you resources like this newsletter, our events, community and more:

AWS, Albany Partners, Code Climate, Google Cloud, HeadChannel, Vention, Jellyfish, LinearB, 101 Ways, O’Reilly, Pentalog, Skiller Whale, Swarmia, Uplevel, YLD

Leadership, Strategy & Business

5 Levels Of Problem Solving: A Framework For (First-Time) Managers -

Breadcrumbs list
Corporate Rebels
Getting Things Done Right
Exploring the meaning of effectiveness.
No Just BitsAlex Di Mango
How Growing Tech Engineers Enables Growing Yourself as a Leader
It’s challenging to grow into a new role when you are still holding on to what you have been good at and really love, and what you’ve been doing in your previous role. By attaching to everything you used to do, you are also depriving the people around you of an opportunity to grow and learn to maste

InfoQBen Linders
How to tell a great story
A blog post that deconstructs how to be a great spoken storyteller. How do you make an audience lean in?

Culture, People & Teams

5-Minute DevOps: Feature Team Strawman Fallacy
Large Scale Scrum’s recommends everyone use feature teams. Here’s a review of their reasons. You’d need to try hard to be more wrong.
MediumBryan Finster
The Spotify Model of Scaling – Spotify Doesn’t Use It, Neither Should You
The “Spotify Model” probably isn’t a model and definitely isn’t what is currently practiced at Spotify today. (Some suggest it never was.) The below image was made famous in a video by Henrik Kniberg, where he explains how work was organized into Squads, Tribes, and Guilds. Many people see the struc

Agile Pain Relief Consulting | Scrum and Agile Training and ResourcesMark Levison
Shaping Patterns
How do you create an environment for great work? Where healthy self-organization happens? You notice and shape patterns.
esther derby associates, inc.Esther
4 Types Of Team Conflict | David Burkus
In this article, we will delve into the four types of team conflict: relationship conflict, task conflict, status conflict, and process conflict.
David BurkusDavid Burkus

Technology, Operations & Delivery

Software is Complicated, Given Enough Time
I often say that software these days is complex. But is it? In Cynefin terms, it’s more like an airplane than a family: it’s complicated. Given enough expertise, all the code, lots of d

Jessitron
Refactoring Legacy Code in Shape Up: The Dilemma – Klaus Breyer
Introduction ¶ Legacy code is the proverbial elephant in the room. The nagging issue isn’t “if” it should be refactored, but “when” and “how.” When following the Shape Up methodology, the tech lead has two main options. The Dedicated Tech Sprint ¶ This is a ‘clean-up’ cycle, usually directed by the

Klaus BreyerKLAUS BREYER
Setting Up Cross-Team Workstreams
A Critical Skill for Both Senior and Staff Engineers
The Developing DevRyan Peterman
Sixty seconds to fun and learning! | Agile Alliance
Elevate meetings with Agile-focused Minute-to-Win-It games; enhancing collaboration and fun in any setup.
Agile Alliance |Ellen Grove

Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

Effective Strategies for Building and Boosting Psychological Safety
INSEAD research highlights practical approaches to integrate psychological safety into team dynamics.
INSEAD KnowledgeMark Mortensen
Crafting a Healthier Workday: 11 Healthy Work Habits | Fellow.app
Try implementing these 11 healthy work habits now and see yourself getting 37 times better within a year! Learn more here.
Fellow.appAlexandria Hewko
Improve Your Positive Influence: Eliminate Common Obstacles | The Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog
Leadership Now is a leading source for leadership development and analysis. We believe that anyone can make a difference by leading from where they are.
The Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog
Productivity Without Burnout: Crafting the Blueprint for a Healthy Work Life
Close your eyes for a moment. Imagine you’re on a rowing boat, the waters are calm, and you’re effortlessly gliding. The shores of Success

MediumSora Pazer

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:

https://techmanagerweekly.com

Have an amazing week!

Andy

Published by:

Andy Skipper