Tag: feedback

A Performance Question

At some point in your leadership career, you’ll need to care about performance management. My first bit of advice is the hardest: don’t ever let yourself think or say the words “performance management.” This is impossible, but aspirational. I will explain. My hard earned definition of performance management: a well-defined workflow that either leads to… more

March 19, 2018 3 Comments

How to Rands

Hi, welcome to the team. I’m so glad you are here at $COMPANY. It’s going to take a solid quarter to figure this place out. I understand the importance of first impressions, and I know you want to get a check in the win column, but this is a complex place full of equally complex… more

March 5, 2018 28 Comments

Radical Efficiency

Silicon Valley earned its name for the early chip-making business which staked early claims in orchard filled valleys. Companies such as Fairchild Semiconductor and later Intel and AMD were in the business of silicon, but they were also in the business of reinventing business introducing such concepts of stock options for employees and openly denying… more

April 6, 2017 6 Comments

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 5 Comments

Regardless of seniority, every good manager will:

  • Order pizza.
  • Give feedback.
  • Listen.
  • Take out the recycle/trash. Not a metaphor.
  • Need to find additional things to delegate.
  • Try to support their direct reports to eventually become better than them.
  • Consider constructive feedback regardless of who delivers it.
  • Do what they say.
  • Have regular, un-cancelable 1:1s.
  • Protect their team, push for greatness, and prepare for the future.
  • Get their hands dirty when called for.
  • Focus on helping their team to be wildly successful.
  • Put people first.
  • Give a shit.
  • Relentlessly hustle for their team.
  • Tell the truth.
  • Care.
  • Feel deeply and profoundly awful for disappointing someone on their team.
  • Make mistakes and learn from them.
  • Remove fear.
  • Be the bullshit umbrella and not the bullshit funnel.
  • Remember (and maybe learn from) the time when they weren’t a manager.
  • Work harder than their employees.
  • Educate.
  • Provide consistent and predictable structure.
  • Back up their team when they say “no” to something.
  • Not be a prick.
  • Model the culture and spirit they want to develop in their workplace.
  • Translate corporate bullshit into normal-speak.
  • Empower their staff members.
  • Move things out of their way, including yourself.
  • Regularly feel self-doubt.
  • Be an advocate.
  • Be an ally.
  • Amplify the good in people.
  • Fight the grapevine confusion.
  • Be the first to metamorph to the chrysalis phase.
  • Define reality and say thank you.

(Sourced via the fine humans on Twitter.)

January 5, 2017 3 Comments

The Likeability Feedback Loop

For years, the numbers of comments on articles here have decreased. Comment-worthy articles from five years ago would get dozens and sometimes hundreds of comments. Similarly trafficked articles from the past few years get a handful. It is not without pain, but I believe open comments are part of the deal with running a weblog.… more

November 22, 2016 62 Comments

FriendDA Updates

I’ve made small changes to the FriendDA based on feedback to this post.

  • All the proposed changes in the post have been put into the latest version of the FriendDA.
  • I’ve changed the Creative Commons license to be ShareAlike – it is no longer No-Derivatives.
  • There’s a Github repository that contains the current Markdown and HTML versions. Fork away.

These changes, I believe, will make the FriendDA slightly more useful. Thanks to everyone who contributed feedback.

November 5, 2014