Cate Huston · engineering leadership
Engineering an Interesting Life.
-
The next weight
→: The next weightSomething that comes up regularly in coaching is the idea that you get stronger against the weight you can lift, not against the one you can’t. If your goal is to bench 100kg you don’t get there pushing at that weight on a bar you can’t move. You start lower and work up. You build…
-
The Date – Blunt Implement or Forcing Function?
→: The Date – Blunt Implement or Forcing Function?On some of the worst run projects I’ve seen, leaders trying to get them back on track would set a date. Never, ever, in that circumstance, have I seen a date be met. No-one believes in it, no-one is willing to work overtime to meet it. It slips. Another one is set. And another. Maybe…
-
What would make next week better?
→: What would make next week better?Just about everyone gets overwhelmed sometimes, and many of us deal with that by working harder. This is a reasonable response to a single unexpected thing, or a bad week, but it’s not the right response to systematic overwhelm. Then you need to stop asking the question “what do I do next” (or worse: “how…
-
Book: Churn
→: Book: ChurnClaude Steele’s first book Whistling Vivaldi gave me one of the most useful framings I have for bias. Stereotype threat: in a situation you care about, the worry that you’re about to confirm a negative stereotype about your group degrades how you do. So when I saw he had a new book – Churn: The Tension That…
The full archive