Skippers — Number Six

Skippers are a curated set of articles I found interesting. . I originally shared a similar set of articles with some commentary among the leaders in our R&D team (aka “The Skippers”). To goal was to help us become better leaders and managers, or at a minimum be thought provoking.

Senior engineers reduce risk

Senior engineers reduce risk, in every sense. Often, “risk” is used to describe technical risk, which is that the software doesn’t function properly, or is never completed at all. But there are other issues that can prevent the business atop the software from succeeding — risks around process, or product design, or sales, or the company’s culture. A senior engineer understands these risks, and mitigates them where possible.

Czar of bad systems

I read this fun story in The Hustle about Hootsuite’s “Czar of Bad Systems”.

In his recent Fast Company article, Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes recounts the story of his employee Noel, a man on a mission to mail someone a shirt. See, earlier this year, Noel wanted to send a custom T-shirt as a gift — nothing flashy, just a good ol’ cotton crew neck (probably a Hanes Beefy if we had to guess). But, by the time Noel had gone through all the approvals, this lone tee had cost the organization about $200 in lost time. Was it worth it Noel? Was it?

No(el), it wasn’t He’d played by the rules and gotten his shirt, but now Noel was pissed, and he wasn’t about to go down without a fight. He ended up tracking down people in both the finance and marketing departments and convincing them to toss out the old rule, in favor of a more relaxed shirt policy, and all was well with the world again. But the whole thing got Holmes’ wondering: “How much time and money [are] being tied up in other bad and broken processes?” And so he created Hootsuite’s unofficial “Czar of Bad Systems” role.

The take away: Because good processes are good… But bad processes are worse.

The new manager death spiral

The title “the new manager death spiral” immediately caught my eye. It’s a good read about the mistakes you can make as a manager. Let me tell you, I found myself nodding with several of the examples.

The article does provide some tips on how to avoid the death spiral. They are all related to the same essential leadership binding agent: trust.

Let others change your mind. There are more of them than you. The size of their network is collectively larger than yours, so it stands to reason they have more information. Listen to that information and let others change your perspective and your decisions.

Augment your obvious and non-obvious weaknesses by building a diverse team. It’s choosing the path of least resistance to build a team full of humans who agree with you. Ideas don’t get better with agreement. Ideas gather their strength with healthy discord, and that means finding and hiring humans who represent the widest spread of perspective and experience.

Delegate more than is comfortable. The complete delegation of work to someone else on the team is a vote of confidence in their ability, which is one essential way the trust forms within a team. Letting go of doing the work is tricky, but the gig as a manager isn’t doing quality work, it’s building a healthy team that does quality work at scale.