rands

Leadership Comes From Everywhere

For years I’ve been working on structuring an interview for assessing leadership. How do you figure out if someone has leadership skills in an hour-long interview? The answer is: you don’t. You need multiple humans not only asking a diverse set of questions but also listening to answers and pivoting to follow-up questions as they… more

#
February 1, 2017
Management
5 Comments

The One About Destiny

With each episode of The Important Thing, I find a smart person on the planet and we talk about one thing… usually. In the second episode, I am excited to be joined by my fellow Guardian John Siracusa to discuss the video game Destiny. Proudest moments, total time wasted, and the reality of the Hunter… more

#
January 27, 2017
The Important Thing
1 Comment

Rainbows and Unicorns

Peggle is a casual game developed by Popcap. Originally released in 2007, the game is memorable because of it’s absolutely over the top level finishing sequence. In an explosion of rainbows, fireworks, unicorns, and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, you are generously emotionally rewarded when you finish a level. As a friend commented at the time,… more

#
January 25, 2017
Management
5 Comments

The Last Jedi

Star Wars VIII has a name: The Last Jedi.

As is custom, we will now endlessly and thoroughly analyze a single image for as much signal as possible. My first thought: the typeface color is red. My second thought: in my head, each of the original trilogy movies is associated with a color.

  • A New Hope: Blue (like Luke’s sword)
  • Empire Strikes Back: Red (where Luke and Vader fight)
  • Return of the Jedi: Green (like… Endor?)

Update: As Dan McClain points out on Twitter, the color matches the lightsaber of Luke, Vader, then Luke again.

#
January 23, 2017

Isaac Asimov wrote 500 books in his lifetime

Asimov wrote a lot:

To match the number of novels, letters, essays, and other scribblings Asimov produced in his lifetime, you would have to write a full-length novel every two weeks for 25 years.

The six tips:

  1. Never stop learning.
  2. Don’t fight getting stuck.
  3. Beware the resistance.
  4. Lower your standards.
  5. Make MORE stuff.
  6. The secret sauce.1

(Via Quartz)

  1. Secret seventh pro-tip: Read the Foundation Trilogy, it’s excellent. ↩
#
January 22, 2017

Hemingway’s Bad Day Drink

“Death in the Gulf Stream,” as he called it, was Hemingway’s salve for 1937—a dark year marked by an economic recession in the US, Joseph Stalin’s wrenching Purge Trials, a new war between China and Japan, and the Spanish Civil War which he covered as a journalist for the North American Newspaper Alliance.

Via Quartz

#
January 20, 2017

The One About Pens

I’ve started a podcast. Each episode, I find a smart person somewhere on the planet, and we talk about The Important Thing. I suspect we’re going to wander a bit, but wandering is usually the best part. I’m just delighted to kick off the first episode1 with Tiff Arment where The Important Thing is pens2.… more

#
January 16, 2017
The Important Thing
6 Comments

One Thing

At this moment, at the beginning of the year, I have eight active big rock projects. The following attributes define these projects: I am the primary owner and have committed to someone that they will be done at a specific time. I am the correct owner of this project. There is no obvious better owner.… more

#
January 13, 2017
Management
16 Comments

I know my manager is flailing and/or drowning when:

  • Too busy all the time
  • S/he starts contradicting herself day to day.
  • There is all talk and no action.
  • She doesn’t have the time to check in and ask how to help; or she has too much time and keeps changing the story of what’s important.
  • The asking is replaced with telling.
  • They end the conversation with acknowledging open issues.
  • I am afraid of bringing him news because I know he will not like it.
  • They don’t follow-up on action items we identified (team, 1:1, or hallway meeting).
  • They stop asking questions.
  • Her messages and manner become inconsistent.
  • They stop coming out of their office.
  • Staff members start getting thrown under the bus.
  • His calendar is full of weekly project meetings with no time blocked for 1:1s or other work.
  • They have a new opinion after every meeting they attend.
  • Every new thing becomes the highest priority.
  • Communication becomes limited to terse tactical directives.
  • He asks me questions that indicate he doesn’t know what I do.
  • Becomes insecure and creates conspiracies.
  • They don’t ask about what team members are trying to learn/get better at.

(Sourced via the fine humans on Twitter.)

#
January 12, 2017