Category: behaviour

Categories
behaviour startup

Stay on the bus

The title comes from one of the TED talks about a photographer changing his style as a response to feedback over and over, and never accomplishing much.  The talk’s theory is called the Helsinki bus stop theory as it was told in the context of going back and picking up another bus from the (Helsinki) bus stop and not reaching the destination.

Often investors prefer startups to change “buses” fast so the testable surface area of ideas increases. But as in the TED talk enduring the feedback and building on could be the best way.

 

Categories
behaviour book climate

Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy

This scientific paper is super depressing as it outlines arguments which sum up to the fact that we are facing inevitable collapse, probable catastrophe and possible extinction due to global warming. I think there is no point getting depressed but we need to acknowledge the facts of global warming and start addressing the inevitable adaptations our society will have to go through. No point discussing any more. We need to start acting now. 

 

Categories
behaviour patterns people team work

Location, location, location of the Engineering team

Where’s the team? Is it in house? Why is it remote? People are interested. They have a right to know. However, I am always interested to find out what’s behind the question.

My data sample is small and built from my experience as CTO and working on consulting projects. So I am biased. Nevertheless, I think once you find more about the person asking the question you can correlate their view fairly accurately to the perceived right answer.

If the person is a recruiter or a talent manager, commonly the view is that in house creates better team dynamics and creates more hiring work which people with local hiring experience are more comfortable with.

If the person is from a finance department, the outcome is diagonally different. The cost, time to market and scale play a big part as to what good looks like.

Is the person is a CEO or an investor, there is no given right answer usually as there is awareness that not one answer fits all situations. And usually the strategic decision about the team make up is taken considering many variables but primarily where can I hire the best people to grow my business fast.

Finally, if the person is an engineer, she or he won’t care. Why? Because engineers want to work with the best engineers, making location irrelevant.

Having managed teams of 2 people to 60+, I think what’s important is how one is organised, what processes are followed and how well work is documented and tracked.

Usually default opinion backing the in house teams option is hidden behind poor communication, undeveloped technology strategy, immature operating model and incomplete documentation (stories, roadmap, tests). Lack of any of above is not a good enough reason to pick any option. Don’t miss on top talent for being lazy.

Categories
behaviour future leadership strategy

Beginning of year 2019 post

The holiday period is always a good time to reflect on the year gone by, and to turn our minds to the future.
 
2018

We started in March 2018 with an idea that we had for a while: making debtor experience best it can be while making the collections process as efficient as it can be. 

I won’t dwell too much on 2018, but what another fantastic year for our business! We developed the product and accompanying service and started executing go-to-market, hired the the team and secured a business incubator backing.

We also learnt a lot on the way. However the key lesson for us would be that hyperrealism is a friend.

  • Assuming the product will resonate with the market (if untested) will most likely be proven wrong. On reflection this is obvious.
  • Product-market fit takes time. Assume you are wrong, so test. Don’t pitch to customers. Proof is to have a meaningful commitment: signed order, intro to a decision maker.
  • Message-market fit will come from talking to customers.
  • Deep analytical understanding is only possible with sufficient data being available.
  • Create your data by talking to customers, partners and competitors. Don’t pitch, think of uncomfortable question to ask, listen to answers and try to disprove your own world view.
  • Once you stop hearing new info you probably know enough to develop testable product hypothesis.
  • Product team needs to lave products (not just in your own domain). Actually better to have broader product experience than domain experience.
  • New product requires new thinking applied to proven product design. No need to invent unessential elements of your product. Use best practice for sign up, activation, integrations, security.

2019

Taking leanings from 2018, we are looking at 2019 with clear focus on go-to-market, building a strong team and serving our customers.  

Categories
behaviour people

The Problem With Feedback

The author of the Atlantic article argues: The proliferation of ratings systems doesn’t necessarily produce a better restaurant or hotel experience. Instead, it homogenizes the offerings, as people all go to the same top-rated establishments. Those places garner ever more reviews, bouncing them even farther up the list of results. Rather than a quality check, feedback here becomes a means to bland sameness.

Categories
behaviour

Nudge to go live

Interesting to learn again how even small changes test organisations. Launching a simple website lets you find out about your team mates, priorities, yourself.

Categories
behaviour Google people team

High performance teams – what Google learnt

The NY Times article says: Project Aristotle’s researchers began searching through the data they had collected, looking for norms. They looked for instances when team members described a particular behavior as an ‘‘unwritten rule’’ or when they explained certain things as part of the ‘‘team’s culture.’’ Some groups said that teammates interrupted one another constantly and that team leaders reinforced that behavior by interrupting others themselves. On other teams, leaders enforced conversational order, and when someone cut off a teammate, group members would politely ask everyone to wait his or her turn. Some teams celebrated birthdays and began each meeting with informal chitchat about weekend plans. Other groups got right to business and discouraged gossip. There were teams that contained outsize personalities who hewed to their group’s sedate norms, and others in which introverts came out of their shells as soon as meetings began.

After looking at over a hundred groups for more than a year, Project Aristotle researchers concluded that understanding and influencing group norms were the keys to improving Google’s teams.

Categories
behaviour leadership people startup team

No ego

Hiring, hiring, hiring. I’ve been hiring for the last 6 months non-stop. Before leaving my job I had to hire new CTO and a team of 6 in India as part of my handover.

At my new startup, I am setting up a team and I started hiring even before I started. I talked to freelancers from Upwork, super contractors in London, AWS solution architects, many outsourcing agencies from 20 to 200 staff in Serbia, Ukraine,  Belarus, Holland, South Africa., LinkedIn contacts, Twitter followers, CTOs from London, Israel and Belgrade… and many recruitment consultants.

I posted jobs on job boards from LinkedIn to local job sites in Eastern Europe. I interviewed many candidiates in the first to final rounds, reviewed not as many CVs (engineers don’t know how to write CVs), built submitted code, performed many coding tests, talked to many managers. The key to success is to forget your ego and find value in candidates for the particular role you are hiring for. Forget your ego.

Categories
behaviour code

Daily pull requests

When manging remote teams I find useful to agree for engineers to perform regular code submissions. I should also note, from my experience on both ends, that when someone — myself included — isn’t making regular pushes or pull requests., they’ve usually “checked out.” That is, they’re not actually working. And more importantly, they’ve stopped caring.

So, as long as you’re actually doing work, and as long as writing code is a daily responsibility of yours, you shouldn’t be afraid to push code every day. If you find that difficult, you might be in the wrong job! And, that’s something both your manager and you should want to see the early signs of!

Categories
behaviour hacks people

+ 80 IQ points

A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Alan Key