In this story, we analyze what makes up the role of a technical writing manager, how to improve your skills, and how to be a brilliant leader.
Emotional Intelligence may take a back set to its more prominent sibling, the Intelligence Quotient but its no less important for leaders to cultivate.
Books are the best resource for sharing knowledge in a not-assisted way. They go deep into a topic, or more briefly over a bunch of them. Although, as a Software Engineer, I learned a lot from blog posts, tweets, and conference talks, it was books that prepared me for the Tech Lead role.
How to be a product leader: the difference between product leadership and product management
One of the most important aspects of building great product organisations is to design a system where builders thrive. A group of well-organized, ambitious yet humble, smart folks is an unstoppable force.
Ted Lasso's leadership style is rarely seen in media.
What traits can we learn from Ted to make us successful leaders?
By knowing what motivates Gen Z employees, managers can better manage and retain this amazing young generation of talent.
In reality, as projects are executed, new information can challenge the objective. These are situations that can make one happy or frustrated.
You know, that the software development process is not simple, sometimes frustrating, and exhausted with strict deadlines and requirements.
One of the essential qualities to Tom Brady’s game is his leadership skills to get the maximum talent and productivity out of his teams to become the GOAT.
Currently, the UK economy is living through tough times.
Engineers often complain about product strategy, but this post goes through why it is so hard and how to avoid common pitfalls.
Founders and CEOs have a lot of tasks and responsibilities. Coaching the team, becoming a mentor for newcomers, and preparing for the end of the world.
Think it's easy finding a job after Twitter? Think again.
The system we grew up with is a mess.
WorkPatterns is a toolkit for people managers that guides 1:1s, continuous feedback, recognition, and goal setting.
Management is a tricky job. You are required to care for other people and their growth while also feeling responsible for their emotional and mental well-being.
Eric Gong talks about how to uncover a candidate's motivations during an interview and why that's so crucial to understanding if they are a culture fit or not.
Here are five key skills needed for the modern CMO to succeed including the ability to be data-driven and an understanding of digital transformations.
What makes an effective general manager?
Conflict arises at the individual or team level in varying situations; it’s part of the human story of working together.
As a Ukrainian company, "business as usual" has since lost its meaning. Here are some lessons we've learned under the immense pressure of a new normal.
In this article, entrepreneur and dual-CEO Misha Rudominski offers his expert advice on running two companies at the same time.
Many times, the best problem solvers in an organization never get a chance to contribute their creativity, so a lot of potential goes undiscovered.
Being caught in the ‘busy trap’ makes it harder to see that productivity is not based on the number of hours you put in; it’s the time spent creating value.
As an industry, we need to work together more effectively, communicate clearly, and solve problems with less conflict. In short, we need stronger people skills.
Like most absolute statements, this one simply isn't true:
High-performing teams proactively develop their engineers to address the team's skill gaps, using methods such as tutorials, mentorship and stretch assignments
Antonio Lucio during Brandweek Masterclass (photo credit: Adweek)
Ever wonder what it would be to end on a high? How about offering a Masterclass on your last day as global chief marketing officer for Facebook?! Yeah talk about mic drop.
It’s hard to believe, but it has already been a year since Russia attacked Ukraine without any provocation, rhyme, or reason.
Use this easy exercise to figure out who is responsible for what. Handy for teams and individuals.
Processes are essential for effective management. They keep people in sync, making it possible for team members to come together and achieve a shared goal. But they’re also dangerous. Processes can create the illusion that things are running smoothly because they’re moving along according to the shared understanding of how they’re “supposed to” run.
This is the Fallacy of Process — the idea that by adding consistency and predictability to a shared workflow, a given process is inherently valuable.
Too often, process becomes canon. A team develops an effective way of doing something, then returns to that framework indefinitely, long past its expiration date.
Modern organizations need complex IT infrastructures to provide goods and services at the expected levels. Any malfunctioning component can have damning effects
Hank Scorpio achieved something special in The Simpsons.
He got Homer Simpson to CARE about his job.
How did he do it?
In this story, we’ll be exploring 7 of the issues that may face business leaders in 2022 and how best they can manage them.
Your underperforming team needs help and you can create positive change by giving transformative constructive feedback to employees with these skills.
It’s embarrassing for any executive or professional to forget the name of the person you just met, but it’s not life-changing. It’s the other working memory
To reach Gen-Z, brands cannot ignore gaming as a channel. Some brands have already begun capitalizing on these platforms.
Today's interview is with Marek Tihkan, CTO at Dashbird talking all about Dev team leadership and management.
I loved being a software engineer, or so I thought. On my last project working as an engineer, I fondly recall spending my weekends writing code to finish any user stories in my queue. It got to the point that I completed my work so far in advance that I was running a few sprints ahead of my team. I started to use my newfound free time during the week to sit in as many application requirement gathering meetings as possible. I began to collaborate more with our design team and shadow interviews with customers about the product we were building. I shifted into more of a mentorship role for our engineering team. At times, I found myself explaining the rationale behind a feature design decision and bouncing ideas around for an architectural approach in the same conversation. It took me a while to reach this career-changing realization; I was more interested in shaping the product than building it.
It’s an understatement to say that the world is facing never-before-seen problems. But never-before-seen problems have, and always will be, met with innovative solutions. Those solutions may come from startups, they may come from established companies, but regardless, the leaders of those companies no longer have to navigate this new landscape alone.
The most successful companies take the greatest care of their people. Here are few things your should take into consideration to enable your growth.
TL;DR: A self-leader does everything that a leader should do, but for herself. She plans, motivates, listens, and cares for herself. She uses the S.A.M. framework to put her efforts into perspective by focussing on Skills, Attitude, and Mindfulness as the core of her self-leadership practice.
The focus must be on change management, but to ensure you can remain relevant in the global market, you must have an effective change management plan.
I’ve been playing bass since I was 15. I play other instruments as well, but I have always been primarily a bass player.
Learning to lead and manage teams are essential skills for anyone looking to advance their career.
Giving and receiving feedback is crucial to grow as a person, but it's not easy for everybody to take it. Here's an insight on the truth about feedback.
When it comes to scheduling meetings, I am a firm believer in Maker’s schedule vs Manager’s schedule. In his essay, Paul Graham touches upon the topic of optimizing the number of meetings. In this article, I would like to talk about another related aspect of meetings, i.e. how to optimize the meetings themselves by establishing good meeting etiquettes.
Many articles, books, podcasts, and videos these days convey the importance of failure in shaping our future.
Your employees’ relationships with their work environment are just as meaningful as their home environment when it comes to mental health.
Managing remote teams during the pandemic is never easy. Learn how to maximize the efficiency of your global engineering teams.
Companies need to adapt to the changes necessary in a hybrid workspace to set employees up for success.
We hope that this article will become your guide to best practices that will help you build, grow, and manage a team that is fully remote and spread around the world.
You may have heard of People Intelligence platforms—albeit these solutions you may have encountered focused very much on the pre-hire stages of your employee experience versus the day-to-day post-hire segment of their experience. People Intelligence can be defined as the combination of strategies and technologies used by organizations for statistical and data-driven analysis of performance, productivity, and business information. People Intelligence platforms can make sense of disparate people-generated data by transforming the information into actionable insights that impact a business’ operations.
Becoming a Tech Leader implies in more responsibilities. Your toolkit must include new skills. Besides designing, writing, and reviewing code, tech leaders must care about the team members and the overall code quality and architecture.
How to do milestone identification, project plans, risk registries, and project updates.
Want to inspire and motivate your individual contributors? Try setting clear goals and expectations, providing ongoing feedback and support, encouraging career
The emergence of ChatGPT has stirred major buzz around the world and massive disruptions across multiple industries.
I wasn’t a big fan of managers in my decade long programming career. I took pride in my accomplishments as a developer, the individual contributor. After all, I was the one making things happen or part of the team that made things happen. We built features, fixed critical issues and in my view, only reason business existed was because developers worked hard.
Many leaders of corporations and entrepreneurs know that a leadership blog from their personal POV is a useful way to build a brand’s relationship with its audience. But in a time of crisis, having a leadership blog takes on a new level of importance -- one that you should consider.
It's important to make informed decisions that positively impact your organization. But how do you know when to rely on data and when to use intuition?
Most organization don't build enough software and are therefore missing out on possible value.
I’m Amit Rapaport, the CEO, and Co-Founder of Compete; married; mother of 3 crazy boys. My husband is my Co-Founder and CTO.
In a fast-moving, ever-changing, dynamic work environment, the ability to collaborate effectively isn’t a necessity, it’s a superpower.
A Mini-M is a group of managers that meet weekly or biweekly. The meeting is a combination support group and working session.
One of the key things that makes leaders effective is the ability to orient themselves. Leaders make their own problems. This post shares how to do that.
In a period when deaths and serious injuries arise almost regularly in the workplace, employees will contend with at least three very distinct audiences. A fatality or traumatic injury at the workplace triggers the desire to connect with mourning people, including family members of the victim, eye witnesses of the tragedy, or co-workers who experience a sense of loss.
Duke Leto might have been your favorite fictional character, but I'm not sure that you would like and support him as your business leader.
Thirty years ago our managers enabled uninterrupted work. Today they throw as many interruptions at us as they can manage. Independent work is derided.
You can find your way to success from an entry-level to an executive-leadership position. You just have to take the route that compliments your attributes best
Learn why code quality matters, the most important metrics you need to manage quality, and how to track and manage code quality issues.
Wavveup is partnering with US Research Center Blackhawke Behavior Science to offer entrepreneurs the first tailored 360 leadership assessment.
The leadership I’ve learned through life could be summed up and put on the front of a t-shirt, “95% of the leadership skills I learned, I learned in the Army.” If that saying isn't already a thing: ™️. Though I left the U.S. Army a little over 20 years ago, I still stand by that statement.
A book review of ''The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change'' by Camille Fournier. Find out whether the book is right for you.
One of the most common mistakes early managers make is to focus on being a "shit shield". Learn why this backfires, and what to do instead.
Here are tips for choosing job levels when headcount planning.
“I’m going to do a boss move,” announced my manager, almost like she was going to step out for lunch. “Let’s discuss more in our meeting later.”
Military minds understand their armies are really only as good as their sergeants. Sure an army needs officers, but often lower ranking officers are usually young and inexperienced. Though they outrank the sergeant, they lack the experience of real world execution. The sergeant, the non-commissioned officer, is also a leader of men. Their paths to this leadership position can be a much longer slog doing the same work as the mainline enlisted.
What was her key to success? Her answer was as profound as it is simple with the potential for success encapsulated in this concept applicable to every industry
Valued employees are good employees. Simple things like public acknowledgement and being considerate of their needs are all you need to make them feel great.
What does measuring pull requests have to do with a boat adrift and me forgetting to call a friend on his birthday? The simple act of tracking metrics led to a team engaged in the process and resulted in an incredible improvement in business operations.
Part-time entrepreneur leads a successful company to 567th on the INC. 5000. How did he do this and how did technology play such a big roll?
A few ideas on how to maximise the real-world impact of your product work.
A discussion on hurdles faced by women in achieving leadership goals and how to overcome them.
When you get promoted to a new manager, there are lots of questions in your mind.
How to apply UX design principles to develop supportive and efficient engineering cultures
This article is on product leadership and how to lead your product, rather than just being a product manager. Transform requests into user stories and features.
With the rise of data science there has been the rise of data science managers. So what do you need to keep in mind if you wish to join these data translators that are acting as a conduit between the business and technical data teams? Going from a practitioner to a manager — your job now is to make sure that data resources are being used optimally so how do you go about doing this effectively?
Being a successful Engineering Manager is not easy. Learn about 4 common pitfalls of failure that Engineering Managers need to watch out for.
If a leader isn’t authentic, they can’t really be effective.
To be the best of the best, Super Bowl championship teams need an elite level of consistency, trust, a culture of success, goals, measurement, and rewards.
Practical leadership tips for a tech lead of a software engineering team.
Babe Ruth, one of the greatest baseball players of all time, once said:
What is the first thing that you do when you start a new data science or analytics role?
While the change demands letting go of our existing identity and embracing new ones with openness, it’s our mindset that determines what we make of our mindset.
Everyone does remote meetings nowadays! The culture has changed from having a room with people, drinking coffee, typing at their laptops and guiding discussions through the multitude of subject matters that they have to cover and resolve to… them doing the same thing BUT through their screens.
BANI Leadership: what skills will be important, what knowledge should be acquired and what illusions should be abandoned in the new post-VUCA BANI world?
When working in an agile development team, having effective communication is essential. In times of remote working, where teams are distributed, it’s important to ensure that all people on the team are aligned with the goals, sharing knowledge and risks when necessary.
1–1 meetings are a great way to connect and bring people closer. To make these meetings more effective, consider doing them frequently and adapting it and its recurrence according to the participants’ perception.
We feel vulnerable. But instead of embracing vulnerability, accepting our fears, and leading with curiosity, we put on a shield of protection.
Here’s my recommendation when it comes to books that will help a technical person to get into management and executive functions.
Even though a group of individuals is called a team, they are not. People do not know exactly which direction they are going and may pursue different goals.
I keep losing my best employees. I know I'm the reason, but I refuse to change. So how do I screw up my best people? I challenge and provide them with feedback.
The new normal of remote work is here. While the option to work from home was available at many organizations before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, this way of working has become a forced reality in certain industries. Lockdown restrictions are starting to ease up, but many companies are still enforcing or allowing their teams to work from home full- or part-time.
Renovation projects have a lot of moving parts that must work simultaneously. No wonder, large projects take 20% longer to finish than scheduled and are 80% over budget. From planning to budgeting to hiring to the actual remodeling, all processes have to be coordinated for the whole project to be completed.
As a manager, without a system in place to measure yourself and actively monitor how you’re doing, you can't identify all the areas that you need to improve on.
I used to think mission statements were laughably gratuitous and "frou-frou". Over time I realized a good mantra can save your company.
Andrii Poddubnyi, an Engineering Director at Innovecs, shared his trajectory and important lessons and outlined the role of people in his career path.
Patrick Campbell goes over why you shouldn't treat your team like children.
In this article, Anton Shashuk, Delivery Manager at Innovecs, shares his own experience and path to engineering leadership.
Ever felt like you just nailed your team collaboration issues but run into more of them a few weeks later?
All leaders throughout their leadership journey feel intense emotion. While some big decisions like organization restructure, negotiations, acquisitions and mergers can be a source of anxiety, oftentimes it’s the small day-to-day things like a looming deadline, presentation, or a decision meeting that can be a source of stress and anxiety.
Speak at length about the importance of a healthy work-life, but then send emails late in the night
If you are looking for opportunities to advance faster in your career, mentorship and executive sponsorship may be for you.
I’ve tech-led teams at Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter. I’m also a licensed private pilot and have found that there are many lessons from flying that can benefit software engineering teams. In this post, I’d like to share some of these lessons while also providing you an insight into aviation.
If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, right? The perfectionist in you likes to be in control and is good at finding excuses - “Outcome won’t be as good.” “It will take me longer to assign and explain than to do it myself.” “I don’t have anyone with the right skills.” “No one in the team wants to do it anyway.”
Since this virus is so contagious that it spreads to other people by contact, the only way possible to curb its spread is to stay away from other people. To help you understand how dangerous this virus is, you need to have a look at Italy. Italy reported its 1st positive case on Feb 20 and till the date, it has One Hundred Four Thousand positive cases with more than Twenty Thousand deaths.
Understanding the severity of the situation, authorities have requested everyone to stay at their home and refrain from going outside. To promote this, companies have advised their employees to work from their home
Remote work (also called telework or telecommuting), has been growing in popularity over the past twenty years. Many organizations allow for flexible worksites on some level: employees work remotely for part of the week, as-needed for minor illness, or when school or childcare is unavailable. However, with a major health concern on the rise, companies of all sizes (including tech giants such as Twitter, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft) have transitioned some or all employees to remote work to keep business moving while limiting unnecessary exposure to COVID-19.
For modern tech companies like Amazon and Apple, the infrastructure and policy need for remote working are unquestionably already in place and the vast majority of staff members are probably already laptop users.
For smaller organizations, however, the situation is likely to be different. Remote working is limited to software development and marketing companies. The education sector is a good case in point: universities have been delivering distance learning as a feature for some time, while high schools and others are mainly dependent on staff and pupils being on-site to learn.
Companies transitioning to the work-from-home model became the recurring theme of the last month. I've spent more than half of the previous decade working in remote teams and have seen quite a few transitioning from the office to full-remote processes. Actively advocating remote work to everyone I know, I feel having to put a few cents into the tip jar.
Are you being the best leader you can be? Is your leader effective? here are some useful tips on how to do better.
Robert Iger, now Executive Chairman of The Walt Disney Company is the former CEO of Disney. During his 15 years as CEO of Disney and as President of ABC Television prior to that, he led the company to amazing new heights. Under his leadership, Disney’s market capitalization increased from $48 billion to $257 billion. He oversaw the acquisition of Pixar in 2006, Marvel entertainment in 2009 and many more after that. He is the perfect exemplar of a leader who has proved himself over an extended period of time.
Learn how to give positive feedback to colleagues with examples built off the SBIR process. Make it memorable by using specific examples.
Does it ever cross your mind that praise can be negative? I guess not. After all, it looks harmless and seems to be quite effective. Conventional wisdom says that if you praise people, they are motivated to do better.
