Recommended Reading 2023: Remote + Leadership
Continuing on from my 5 recommendations for product and process books, here are 6 more books I’ve read and found interesting around remote work and leadership in the last year.
Remote
I spent the pandemic at a reluctantly-remote company. As I joined a remote-first company last year, I wanted to challenge my views on face-to-face collaboration. Leading from Anywhere: The Essential Guide to Remote Teams by David Burkus was the best resource I found. He talks about how alignment of purpose becomes even more important, how to create ‘bursty’ communication and aligned calendars, why you should never assume you have consensus, using voice first and video later, using meetings to finish (not start) things, how to break the patterns of silence in meetings, working to shorter timelines, and more.
I found a punchier take in The Anywhere Operating System by Luke Thomas and Asha Samake. Luke is all about hardcore asynchronous work wherever possible. The book underscores the need for good written communication when working remote, and for continually reinforcing use of tools like wikis in everyday work. Luke actually goes so far as to suggest asynchronous 1:1s using an automated weekly form, with follow-up calls only when needed. For me, this was a step too far (especially since I was joining a new team and wanted to have regular face-to-face conversations to get to know them) but I appreciated having my thinking challenged in this way.
At my previous company, Slack use exploded during the pandemic, and some colleagues complained there was so much noise they couldn’t keep up. Out of Office by Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen explains why — when we work in the office, we often unconsciously judge the productivity of others based on what we literally see them doing. In a company that has vague goal setting and doesn’t pay attention to results, shifting online means many people start to ‘perform presence’ by looking busy on Slack and other online systems. Some good tidbits about personal operating manuals and one-pagers here too, but this is largely a treatise on the end of the office.
After running a lot of remote workshops during the pandemic, I had the basics in place (I now believe Miro is often better than stickies and whiteboards) but I was missing some techniques for managing conflict and energy inside of a video call. Enter Rituals for Virtual Meetings by Kursat Ozenc and Glenn Fajardo. They have a ton of ideas for starting and ending meetings; for focus, engagement, and flow; and for ‘resilience and rejuvenation’. I particularly like the Perspective Pause (stopping the discussing and asking each party to come up with charitable explanations for the positions of others) and the Curiousity Timeout (for regaining energy when everyone is getting bleary and unfocused). If you’ve read Kaner, use this book to bring your online techniques to the same level.
Leadership
In my previous job I was managing coaches and found my old 1:1 style that worked with Product Managers didn’t carry over. I found a new approach The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier.
Michael’s book offers a 7 question template that is the one sticky on my monitor today — it helps me get out of making suggestions and back into coaching.
Mergers have a way of increasing political tension, and as I went through one in 2022, few of us were at our best. I felt myself struggling to always assume positive intent from my colleagues. So I was inspired to pick up The Outward Mindset, published by the Arbinger Institute without a named author. The book talks about how a company can get stuck in an inward mindset, where everyone is focused on behaviors that enhance and protect themselves, versus an outward mindset, where people focus on behaviors that advance the collective result. This is closely related to the idea of being ‘stuck in the box’ from their 23-year old classic Leadership and Self-Deception which focused on how to develop an outward mindset as an individual leader.
Like many leadership parables, the book is written about an executive team changing their own behaviors in order to change the culture. I would start with ‘Leadership and Self-Deception’ if you’re not at the c-level.
