Three signs of a poor hiring process—and four ways to fix it

March 17, 2020.Reading time 1 minute.

My latest in Quartz… When given the opportunity to establish a process, we’re all biased to advocate for one in which we would be successful ourselves. In hiring, this plays out in two main ways: “A” players build monocultures, hiring people just like them, and “B” players hire “C” players, hiring people who won’t threaten […]

Phase 1 of Hiring, Getting from 0-30

January 23, 2019.Reading time 6 minutes.

Towards the end of 2017, we reopened hiring on the mobile team at Automattic which had been shut since the start of the year as we got things in order. I think of this as phase 1 of hiring on the team – nailing the basics of the process, and making some progress with diversity […]

Understanding how process impacts outcome can help avoid useless meetings

September 25, 2018.Reading time 1 minute.

My first article in Quartz! Earlier this year, when I was learning how to facilitate a specific type of workshop, a colleague revealed the secret to making it great: understanding the outcome and keeping it in mind throughout the entire process. If the team isn’t focused on the outcome, than they’re just performing a process. […]

Process Design

December 12, 2017.Reading time 2 minutes.

(or: be careful what you incentivise) When we design processes, we are heavily biased to design processes that we would be successful in. We see this with hiring processes, and we see this with promotion processes. You might think having multiple people would help with this but this seems just as likely to create the […]

Process, and Culture

February 19, 2014.Reading time 4 minutes.

As an individual, I have habits, and I have processes. The processes are things that aren’t quite natural enough to be habits, yet. I think process helps me create a framework that helps me be effective – at work, and in life. For example, having a schedule for my blog. Posting something on Monday, Wednesday and Friday […]

The Waterfall Method is No Way to Plan Your Life

October 7, 2010.Reading time 6 minutes.

I have a new mentee, her name’s AY Daring and you should check her out because she’s awesome. The other day we were talking about what she wants to do with her life, and she has this great stuff that she’s doing with respect to LGBT youth, and I said, “sure, that’s great but will […]

Failure Is Not An Option

August 5, 2010.Reading time 7 minutes.

Having admitted that I seek out a high level of stress, it’s timely that I have, once again, gone way past the level of stress that I like to operate and hit the “woah this is damaging to my productivity” bit. I wrote before about How to be Crazy Busy Without Losing Your Mind and […]

Accidentally in Code

Tag: process