I heard about The Alchemy of Us (Amazon) when the author (Ainissa Ramirez) was on the Broad Experience podcast, talking about her work in Science Communications and the challenges of being a Black woman in science (great episode). I immediately bought the book, and then took… 8 months to get to reading it. It’s a […]
I really got a lot out of Coach the Person, Not the Problem [Amazon]. Whilst the content was covered in the courses I took, it approached it in a different way – deconstruction versus experiential – and that was really helpful for solidifying my learning. At it’s core, it’s about switching your focus to the […]
I’m in Business Insider talking about remote work, the article is paywalled [link].
I would love to find a new name for this, now that JK Rowling is cancelled, but in the Harry Potter books, house elves are powerful magical beings, who are condemned to (mostly invisible) servitude, largely of people who would uphold harmful power structures (much like JK Rowling herself). The tragedy of the house elf […]
Originnally shared internally and lightly edited for external readability. Note that this comes from a context where the self review is not part of the promotion packet so focuses on it as a tool to help the manager put together the review. Goal of a self review: Time to reflect and clarify what you’ve achieved […]
Meta-problem (n): root cause issues of a collection of symptom problems. One of the things I do as an engineering director, is live in the realm of the meta problem. The thing that is behind the problems that people are talking about. For instance, a meta problem of an individualistic mindset on the team might […]
Broadly speaking, my overarching agenda for any 1:1 is as follows: It starts with the checkin, “how’s it going?”, an open ended question that some people respond with a status update, and some do not. The important thing is what comes next – finding out how the person feels. Sometimes a status update is useful […]
Periodically, I like to step back and think about the things that I’m not doing. I’m not talking about the things that are on my list, but that I haven’t done yet, or the things that I’m actively choosing not to do. I’m talking about the things that I didn’t have time to think about. […]
When I coach new managers, or transition ICs into management, one of the key struggles initially (which I also remember myself) is overwhelm. For some, this ends up in exhaustion, and those are the people who often switch back onto the IC path – they find management unsustainable at that time (some return to it […]
I did an interview with Range, talking about how the fully distributed teams I lead at DuckDuckGo work. Read it here