🏓 Strategy vs Tactics, Personal Brand, Cultures of Recognition, Metrics for DEI, Coaching, Mobile at Scale: TMW #232 by CTO Craft
Hello there!
Firstly, an apology to all of you who were signed up for last Friday's CTO Craft Bytes session with on the downsides of hiring from outside to fill skills gaps - the session will be going ahead this Friday, Sep 10th at 12.30pm UK time. See you there!
If you missed any of the recent CTO Craft Labs workshops on Successful 1:1s and would like to attend, drop me a line by replying to this email - we're planning some dates later in September and October. We're also pulling together details for the next workshops to be released: First 90 Days as a CTO, Resource Planning and Team Design. Keep your eyes open for dates!
There's something huge brewing at CTO Craft right now - we'll be ready to share it with you very soon, promise
See you next week
Andy @ CTO Craft
CTO Craft Bytes
CTO Craft Bytes - How To Stop Hiring Your Way Out Of Problems Tickets
We'll discuss the pitfalls of using ‘experience’ as a proxy for skills when hiring developers and how tech leaders can effectively change the skill profile of their existing team.
Read of the Week
The Engineering Leader’s Guide to Crafting a Personal Brand that Stands Out From the Crowd
As an Engineering Leader at Help Scout, Anjuan Simmons has carved out a robust side hustle as a public speaker and blogger. Here, he shares his playbook for engineers to get started with personal branding and stand out from the crowd.
From the CTO Craft Blog
Received feedback? Here’s how to make the most of it
Don't be disarmed by critical feedback, here CTO Craft share their 7 top tips on using it to your professional advantage.
Honest, Personal and Unexpected: Sustaining a Culture of Recognition
Equal Experts' David Cox breaks down how to improve workplace culture and staff morale by focusing on recognition, no matter how small.
About our Partners
A huge, huge thanks to our partners for supporting CTO Craft in 2021 - you’re all amazing!
AWS, O'Reilly, Karat, CircleCI, Indiespring, Skiller Whale, iTechArt, LinearB, PGS Software, 101 Ways, The Software House, Albany Partners, The Scale Factory
🥝 🥝 If you’re interested in reaching thousands of senior technology leaders and decision makers, drop a reply to this email to see our Partnership Opportunities! 🥝 🥝
Culture & People
Returning to work through the eyes of Maslow
For many employers and senior leaders, the urge to bring employees back to the office is becoming much stronger. Many feel they are losing their grip on employee productivity and engagement. And continuing to have a dispersed workforce as they look to the future seems, well, really uncomfortable!
9 metrics to help you understand (and prioritize) DEI
Now more than ever, corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts are under a microscope - and companies are taking notice of that mounting pressure. Gartner’s research found that the number of HR leaders who cited DEI efforts as a top priority was 1.8 times higher in 2020 than in 2019.
How to Work with Someone Who Creates Unnecessary Conflict
Conflict at work comes in many forms. Good conflict, the kind that is healthy, pushes us to be better as people and communities. Most organizations need more good conflict, not less. But sometimes, conflict can become malignant.
Leadership & Self-management
Becoming more strategic as a manager
As you progress in your role as a manager, the path may lead you to need to look to become more strategic. It may be the beginning of the next step up the ladder or it may just be to enable you and your team to deliver better results. I thought it would be good to look back over my journey.
Strategy vs. Tactics: Why the Difference Matters
In order to do anything meaningful, you have to know where you are going. Strategy and tactics are two terms that get thrown around a lot, and are often used interchangeably in numerous contexts.
How to coach an employee who is performing well
Focus on these 3 areas for how to coach an employee who is performing well. When we think about coaching employees, we often focus on how to coach an underperforming employee – not how to coach an employee who is performing well. It’s natural.
How To Maintain Your Leadership Integrity, Even When The Cookies Look Irresistible
To protect your integrity as a leader, don’t focus only on the big, obvious temptations. Watch out for the subtle deceptions. Think of it this way.
Agile, Engineering & Product
The building blocks of scale
Learn how specialized mobile teams, an organized codebase, and well-reasoned software architecture can contribute to a more flexible and extensible mobile software development team.
Looking at Example Boards
While it is important to visualize the work, not the workers, it does help to see what people are working on. Obviously, it is only possible to work on one thing at once, but we keep all of those open things in our head somewhere. We often rationalize that we’re “only contributing a bit” to something. Even still, it is in our head.
Mobile Software Development at Scale – Increment
Mobile engineering leaders at adidas Runtastic, Eventbrite, and Citymapper discuss mobile app performance, how mobile fits into their companies’ team structures, and native versus cross-platform development.
What, Exactly, Is Agile Management?
Engineers have long had a poor relationship with managers. There are the stories long told of engineers unconstrained by management executing high stakes skunkworks projects, or more modestly using guerilla tactics to sneak unauthorized features into products that delight users.
That’s it!
If you’d like to be considered for the free CTO Craft Community, fill in your details here, and we’ll be in touch!
https://ctocraft.com/community
Please do remember to share this link if you know of anyone who’d like to receive TMW:
http://www.techmanagerweekly.com
Have an amazing week!
Andy