A beautiful post from Rands (VP Eng, Stripe) on the power of compliments, riffing off the gaming industry’s use of well-timed, enthusiastic, and clearly earned compliments as a motivator.

Ten sketches from Julie Zhou, published in 2015, but still funny, relevant, insightful.  Print ‘em out, put 'e, on the wall.

A super nice set of lessons learned growing from first line manager.

The Management Bible According to Google.  Lots of terrific tools here.

Simple, useful tips about setting up a weekly communication.  Practical.

A nice set of practical rules to communicate to your team where your boundaries are around time.  When you can be interrupted, when not, and how.  Start here.

Super-great post from Ed (and, I think, the most clicked of the year).  A practical, and clearly thought-out approach to getting, and using, your thinking time.

Companion post to the above.

My post on a similar approach to Ed’s - a little more directive, maybe shorter :-)

“Workaholism doesn’t care about you.

It doesn’t care about your health, your family, your friends, your wellbeing. It only cares about itself”

“There are endless ways to screw this up. This is why it’s a merit badge. Once you learn how to successfully deliver hard news, you will never forget. The experience is hard-earned”   Vital stuff.

Good, clear notes from HBS: sets out the basics of structuring accountability.

Helpfully enumerates all the ways a boss can get in the way, and how to avoid them.  Insightful.  Direct.

Terrific post from Lara Hogan (VP Eng Etsy until recently) on how to approach a one on one for the first time.  Depth and insight here (and her comments are useful for any one on one, not just the first one).

Exactly that: a super helpful set of questions to ask to deepen your one on ones.

Super-nice reflection from Marcus about the “magic” that can happen when you start allowing an emotional connection in your one on ones.

“Every time I have a one-on-one, I have a single mission: to understand how the other person is feeling”.   Excellent, and practical, stuff.

Courageous, tough, epic.

Some of the (now massive) repurcusions to the original post.

Included this because a) it got attention but also b) it’s close to my heart, as always. Part of succeeding is being able to live in “Beginners Mind”.  Part of living in Beginners Mind is allowing yourself to look, well, stupid…  If you’re not looking stupid from time to time, you’re not growing.