🍓 Distracting Engineers, Stakeholder Management, Canyoning, Docs as Code, Agile vs Architecture, You're Crazy: TMW #452
Free online mini-conference this week - details inside
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Thanks to The Software House for sponsoring this week’s issue of TMW!
Hello again, welcome to the week!
Have you grabbed your free ticket for this week's Campus Deep Dives event? Starting at 3pm UK time on October 14th, we'll be joined by five experts on the topic of Emotional Intelligence in Technology Leadership. Here's what you have to look forward to:
- Carol Palombini talks to us about how enhancing your EI can improve a CTO's chances in interviews
- Michelle McDaid will show us how EI becomes even more important in the age of Artificial Intelligence
- Claire Russell will walk us through the direct link between EI and mental health and team performance
- Robbie Clutton walks us through techniques to bring more people into the decision making process by increasing the safety of doing so
- Tom Sturge will talk to us about using our EI to improve how we mentor and advocate for others.
As always, we're expecting some brilliant discussions between attendees alongside these super-valuable talks, and you might learn about a very special offer only for those attending... It's going to be a great session - see you there!
Deep Dives: Emotional Intelligence for CTOs
Free to attend: an afternoon of sessions with technology and culture experts on how to build Emotional Intelligence skills.
That's it, on with the links! See you next Monday
Andy @ CTO Craft
SPONSORED
Merger? Acquisition? The CTO’s Guide to Surviving Post-M&A Tech Transformation
Mergers and acquisitions can be exciting growth opportunities for tech companies, but they also bring massive technology challenges. For many tech leaders, this is uncharted territory.
Join The Software House's panel of tech industry leaders as they share hard-earned lessons to help you build a successful post-merger and acquisition transformation plan.
CTO Craft Con - Dates for Your Diary
CTO Craft Con: The Finance Edition
Join CTO Craft Con: The Finance Edition in London - an intimate, community-centered gathering for engineering leaders to connect, learn through insightful sessions, and build real peer relationships in a supportive environment.
CTO Craft Con: London
Join CTO Craft Con: London - an intimate, community-centered gathering for engineering leaders to connect, learn through insightful sessions, and build real peer relationships in a supportive environment.
Reads of the Week
Distracting software engineers is way more harmful than most managers think - Weave - X-ray vision for engineering teams
Weave combines LLMs and domain-specific machine learning to understand engineering work.
Leadership, Strategy & Business
5 Tips to Succeed with Stakeholder Management
This article shares five practical measures for product managers to succeed with stakeholder management and engage key players effectively.
Roman Pichler
The Importance of Leadership
Now even more relevant
Mike Fisher
TBM 383: Maximizers vs. Focusers
Many leaders (and successful entrepreneurs) are what I call “maximizers”. The quotes above come from “focusers”. Maximizers and focusers have a hard time understanding each other. It has nothing to do with skill, since I know highly skilled (and strategic) maximizers AND focusers.
John Cutler
4 Problems Managers Run Into - and Practical Solutions
The management job comes with interesting people challenges. Here are four I’ve run into more than a few times and what to do when they land in your lap.
Dave Anderson
Culture, People & Teams
RDEL #113: What are the seven team profiles of engineering delivery performance?
Seven distinct team patterns emerged from nearly 5,000 developers, each requiring fundamentally different improvement strategies
Research-Driven Engineering Leadership
Between Water and Code: What Canyoning Taught Me About Leading Engineering Teams
There’s a particular kind of conversation that happens in Costa Rica over coffee — the kind where someone unfolds a map on the table and…
Dzcxnkyd
Hiring only senior engineers is the worst policy in the startup industry - Weave - X-ray vision for engineering teams
Weave combines LLMs and domain-specific machine learning to understand engineering work.
From career ladders to ecosystems: A strategic imperative for modern talent management
People are embracing new opportunities and don’t stay in the same roles for life. How can we ensure we secure and nurture talent we need?
Dee Wauchope
Technology, Operations & Delivery
Making Documentation Simpler and Practical: Our Docs-as-Code Journey — Squarespace Engineering Blog
In the fast-paced world of software development, documentation often gets a bad rap. It’s perceived as a chore, a necessary evil, and sometimes, unfortunately, an afterthought. But what if writing documentation could be as dynamic and collaborative as writing the code itself? What if it could be si
Rafael Peixinho
Agile is Out, Architecture is Back
The next generation of software developers will be architects, not coders.
Craig Adam
Refactor with purpose!
Not all complexity deserves to die.
Jeff
Caveat promptor
In the wake of a major incident, you’ll occasionally hear a leader admonish the engineering organization that we need to be more careful in the future in order to prevent such incidents from …
Lorin Hochstein
Stress, Wellbeing & Growth
Face it: you’re a crazy person
OR: why your brain needs a boxcutter
Adam Mastroianni
When You’re the Executive Everyone Relies On—and You’re Burning Out
Many senior leaders are finding themselves overwhelmed as organizations cut budgets and staff while maintaining ambitious goals. In these conditions, bosses often assign extra projects to their most dependable performers, stretching them thin and leading to burnout. To avoid this cycle, executives who keep receiving extra work should clarify priorities before accepting new assignments, delegate or share ownership across teams, and align expectations with their bosses—shifting from doing everything themselves to ensuring the right work gets done by the right people.
Shanna Hocking
Work Hard, Have Fun, Go Home
Hustle culture is the performance of results in place of real outcomes
Lucas PierceSelf Actualization
So tell the story you want to be true. Eventually, it will be.
webmasterboz.com (Andrew Bosworth)
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!
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Have an amazing week!
Andy