7 min read

🚁 Conference Time! Heroes, Rice, Strategy Crisis, Ecological Models, Status Updates, Private Estimates, Square of Happiness: TMW #356

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Thanks to Code Climate for sponsoring this issue of Tech Manager Weekly - trusted engineering insights for maximum business impact.

Hello again! It's conference week!!

As the team finish the last few jobs and todos before the venue gets decked out for CTO Craft Con: Culture and the CTO in East London, speakers are flying in and getting settled, food is being prepared, the stage is being set, hundreds of attendees are making their way towards London and the excitement is set to maximum. We have the brilliant Rands opening the show with a keynote, followed by dozens of the world's best engineering leaders and subject matter experts, all chatting about what differentiates a positive, generative culture from a toxic one, and how the right culture makes getting stuff built that much easier. We absolutely can't wait!

If you haven't been able to book a ticket for the Con this week, don't worry - we have a big announcement coming up about our events plans for 2024, as well as more about how we're rolling out our Mixer social events in cities around the world. You'll hear about it here first, so keep your eyes peeled.

That's it - I better get packing! Until next week...

Andy @ CTO Craft

Discover the key elements of your unique Campus Leadership Profile | CTO Craft
We’ll show you how to find your leadership profile in Campus, how to complete it and what it can offer you.
Campus by CTO Craft: The Go-to Resource for Senior Technology Leaders
Created for CTOs, by CTOs: A transformative learning community for senior technology leaders in startups and scale-ups

CTO Craft Events

CTO Craft: Manchester Mixer
Network and learn with fellow CTO Craft members at The Old Monkey pub in Manchester.
CTO Craft: Dublin Mixer
Network and learn with fellow CTOs, CTO Craft community members and aspiring tech leaders in Dublin, Ireland
CTO Craft: Edinburgh Mixer
Join CTOs and aspiring tech leaders for an in-person CTO Craft Mixer in Edinburgh, Scotland!

Reads of the Week

Build a Deck of Heroes
A way to relate to inspiring people.

From our Sponsors

[eBook] The Fundamentals of Engineering Metrics

Find out how software engineering metrics can help you ensure development and business goals are on track.

Read the eBook

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, Cohaesus, Google Cloud, Vention, Jellyfish, LinearB, 101 Ways, O’Reilly, Pentalog, Skiller Whale, Swarmia, Uplevel, YLD

Leadership, Strategy & Business

The story about rice that made me understand great leadership - Crisp’s Blog
Within the leadership philosophy of “Intent-Based Leadership,” there is a saying that goes: “Create leaders, not followers.” It sounds great, and no one would argue against it, but do you really

The impact of founder personalities on startup success - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - The impact of founder personalities on startup success
Solving the Engineering Strategy Crisis
This is a recording of the final version of my talk, Solving the Engineering Strategy Crisis, originally delivered at QCon SF 2023.Blog: https://lethain.com/

Tools for Systems Thinkers: The 6 Fundamental Concepts of Systems Thinking
In this series on systems thinking, I share the key insights and tools needed to develop and advance a systems mindset for dealing with


Culture, People & Teams

The Nine-Box Grid for Talent Management
Find how to to best support your teams’s member career
How to bring on-call load under control, and keep it that way?
Is your team drowning in on-call alerts, risking customer satisfaction, and struggling with its well-being due to never-ending fire-fighting? Does your team need occasional heroic sprints to just focus on fixing on-call issues? Read on. If you’re responsible for mission-critical software systems, o

Enhancing Organizational Performance with Ecological Models –...
We’re advised to pay attention to interactions at work. It is believed that untapped performance potential lies in altering how people interact with each other, advocating investing in developing more productive workplace interactions. Various research, and philosophies, articulate this

TBM 252: How to Troubleshoot Status Updates and Syncs
I’ve often wondered why some companies can develop strong habits around introspection, weekly goals, weekly reviews, progress logs, and regular updates. Meanwhile, other companies never stick to those habits or do some sort of performative version of the habits without any real value.

Technology, Operations & Delivery

Private Estimates, Public Progress
I remember back when being on one of those gigantic, long-lived software projects when I was a wee programmer. Professional project managers had laid out the entire thing before we started coding. Enlightened professional project managers—they only assumed 4.2 hours of coding per programmer per day.
Risk Analysis (vs / and / or) Threat Modelling – Security Differently
Wait, is cloud bad?
I regret to inform you that there is discourse
Keeping operations secure as you scale - Atlassian Developer Blog
Reading Time: 5 minutes About the author: Doug Kersten, Appfire’s Chief Information Security Officer, brings 20+ years of experience leading security and IT programs for


Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

3 Ways to Build an Organizational Culture That Supports Mental Health
The cultural shift toward greater mental health awareness has helped bring needed attention to psychological suffering, improve access to mental health resources, and reduce stigma. However, it may also be increasing the pathologization of ordinary life, leading people to think of themselves as ment

How Embracing Vulnerability Accelerates Personal Development
Learning and development is a real passion of mine — striving to be the best I can be has always been incredibly important. Its not always

Square of Happiness
How to create an engaged culture
Help! I’m stuck! I want to get to the next level!!
This article clarifies how promotions work and highlights potential pitfalls. It describes a career-growth framework based on technical skills, interpersonal relationships, and influence. As one be


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