A good, considered reminder that culture is behavior, whatever you may have written in your company values statement.

“We can say that our culture requires treating each other with respect, but… when your team sees unkind people get ahead, they understand that the real culture is not one of kindness”

Fascinating.  A screed Against Culture, worth reading to challenge the notion that “culture is everything”.  I happen to think it pretty much is, so was useful to think through the challenges presented here (mostly that it can cause a resistance to change, which can definitely be an issue).

This is a great post.  Digs hard into a topic which is often deal with at a facile level.  Is there a discoverable “authentic self”, or are we constantly (if we pay attention), building our “authentic self”?  It becomes an important question for everyone at some point.  Take a look.

Worth zipping through - a decent framework for considering decision-making.

A good look at psychological safety, with some useful subtleties - among them that “forceful” is a trait in high-performing teams, and can coexist with psychological safety.

“…scientific research shows that creativity and innovation can be enhanced by reducing team harmony”.   Yep - creativity needs boundaries to work within, pressure for motivation, and challenge to kick out the bad ideas.  Whilst maintaining psychological safety.  Nobody said leading a high performance team is easy.

OK, so this article starts from the POV of political conversations, but quickly gets into a set of techniques for managing conflict in conversations generally.  Useful, easy to digest.  Worth reading.

We all filter what we hear depending on who we’re dealing with.  Useful post from Roy.

This comes up a ton in coaching conversations: how much time is being wasted on repetitive, unnecessary tasks.  Automate them!  Jeez.  xkcd lays it out.

Kind of optimistic, and something we all know, deep down.  Our gadgets, for all their hypnotic nonsense, connect us more that we have ever been.

Clare Lew asked 700 managers how they could best use their time.  The results may encourage you to find some time for the important stuff.

Kind of loved this.  Just a good, sensible list of lessons learned from a second-level management job, including: “The biggest reason projects fail is lack of alignment with upper management”.  I feel this should be tattooed on anyone who reaches an exec position.  But that might be a bit harsh (I got mine removed when I quit exec'ing).

Kinda long, but gets good, includes some nice examples of useful status reports, as opposed to those that get written “because we have to” and therefore don’t contain much actual communication.

How to align what you actually do as a company with what you hope your values are.  Useful.

“Women are ‘naturals’ at computer programming,” Grace Hopper, quoted in Cosmopolitan, 1967.  What happened?   Take a read.

A useful, practical list.  Also good to turn it around and see how your company might appear to a woman looking for a job.

Once your org has gone through bias training (or similar), what happens?  Right, not much, probably.  Another great post from Chelsea identifies how we might evaluate behavior which encourages inclusion.  What kind of behavior?  Take a look.  Good stuff.

Giving specific, sincere positive feedback is the easiest, best, greatest thing you can do to help your team succeed.  I know it’s hard, because I frequently emphasize it heavily in Radical Candor Workshops and see how uncomfortable it makes people to give it, and get it.   But it works.  Short article.  Worth reading.

How to be helpful in giving your feedback.  Specific approaches from Kim.

Nicely done outline of how to manage a growing company.  Light-weight, but not facile.  Worth a read.