🤿 Accountability, One-on-Ones, Influencing Up, Psychological Safety, SRE Teams, Forecasting, Project Rescue: TMW #328

Hello again, happy Monday!

It's official - our very first in-person CTO Craft Con has now sold out! We're so grateful for the massive show of support from all our community members, especially those who'll be travelling to London to see us from far afield. I believe the record-holder is coming all the way from Sydney, Australia. The line up is now complete, we've nailed down the Community Showcase talks, the venue is being prepped, the food has been selected, the post-conference social has a venue (the lovely Wapping Tavern) and the whole team can't wait to see you all face to face. It's going to be brilliant.

If you weren't able to secure a ticket, there are now Recordings Tickets available so you can get premium access to all the talks and panels after the main event. Also, there may be another Con in the pipeline... Watch this space.

A number of attendees of our Circle sessions lately have bought up the topic of accountability, and how to instil it among teams, how to avoid a blame culture, and how to show upper management that you have a sense of ownership. There are a couple of interesting posts below on the subject, but we'd love to hear your stories. How important is it to you that your team is accountable, and how do you shape your culture around it? Drop us a line. Oh, and if you'd like to know more about Circles, drop me a reply.

Until we meet again!

Andy @ CTO Craft

Registration | CTO Craft Con London 2023

CTO Craft Con: Recordings Only £199 +VAT Access to the recordings of all sessions post event Recordings Only Pass We are sold out! We are sold out of attendee passes for the first CTO Craft Con! We now have a waiting list in place in the event of cancel…

CTO Craft Con London 2023

Reads of the Week

Team Accountability: Great Teams Hold One Another Accountable (You Can Too)

High-performing teams have one thing in common, accountability is a team sport. A proven method for greater team accountability

Let's Grow LeadersKarin Hurt

How to Be a Better Manager of Managers (let’s talk about accountability)

Practical approaches to help a manager of managers get underneath the root cause of what’s happening and hold their team accountable.

Let's Grow LeadersKarin Hurt

Why DORA metrics aren’t enough | CTO Craft

DORA metrics are broadly accepted as the standard for measuring software development performance, but what’s wrong with a DORA-only approach and is there a better way?

CTO CraftUplevel

CTO Craft Bytes

CTO Craft Bytes: One-on-ones: increasing performance, one person at a time

At this CTO Craft Bytes, we will be joined by Leonardo Andreucci who’ll be telling us more about getting the most from one to ones.

Eventbrite

From our Sponsors

[On-demand Webinar] Maximize Engineering Impact with DORA Metrics

Learn best practices for using DORA metrics to drive change in your org. Feat. Nathen Harvey of DORA.

View the Webinar

Thanks as always to all the amazing sponsors helping CTO Craft bring you resources like this newsletter, our events, community and more:

AWS, Albany Partners, Code Climate, Google Cloud, iTechArt, Jellyfish, LinearB, Lohika, 101 Ways, O’Reilly, PGS Software, Pentalog, Skiller Whale, Swarmia, Uplevel, YLD

Leadership, Strategy & Business

Give More Feedback—Others Want It More Than You Think - By Nicole Abi-Esber and Juliana Schroeder - Behavioral Scientist

People hesitate to give feedback because they simply don’t recognize how much other people want to hear it.

Behavioral ScientistNicole Abi-Esber, Juliana Schroeder

TBM 215: Shallow vs. Deep Alignment

I originally posted this on LinkedIn a couple days ago. It is rare that I post something, and then repost on the newsletter, but I liked this short post. “We’re 100% aligned!” Oh really? “We finished our OKRs! We’re aligned!” Oh really? “The team agreed on action items!” Oh really?

The Beautiful MessJohn Cutler

Balancing your CEO, peers, and Engineering.

There are so many stories of hiring a new executive who comes in and wreaks havoc. I’ve seen engineering leaders start with a giant, doomed migration, marketing leaders who accelerate expenses until they necessitate a round of layoffs, and a number of executives fired in their first month. When peop…

Irrational Exuberance

Suzi McAlpine | The Art of Leadership | 5 ways to influence up as a leader.

Influencing those with more positional power than you is a critical skill to master if you want to be a successful leader. This skill really can be ‘make or break’.

Suzi McAlpine | The Art of LeadershipSuzi McAlpine

Culture, People & Teams

Here are 5 Proven Practices to Boost Psychological Safety - Blog

Breadcrumbs list

Corporate Rebels

Research: Asynchronous Work Can Fuel Creativity

It’s a common misconception that working synchronously is better for creativity. And while there are benefits for ideation, synchronous work is also stifling a lot of people’s creativity. New research studying men and women Baul folk musicians in India shows that recording musical parts asynchronous…

Harvard Business ReviewAruna Ranganathan

DEI For Dummies

A Guide To Do-It-Yourself DEI

Stay SaaSyStay SaaSy

Who builds it and who runs it? SRE team topologies

Ad-hoc SRE principles can get you on the right track, but if you want to sustain it long term, you’ll need organizational structure.

Stack Overflow BlogRyan Donovan

When Development Works and When to Let them Go - Leadership Freak

Sincere leaders stress over developing people. But people are responsible for their own development. You provide opportunity and encouragement.

Leadership FreakDan Rockwell

Technology, Operations & Delivery

A Fresh Perspective on Forecasting in Software Development

In a recent post I delved into some foundational concepts from the book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement, by Kahneman, Sibony, and…

A Path Less TakenPhilip Rogers

On-Time Delivery

Factors affecting on-time delivery include requirements refinement, task dependencies, and organizational alignment.

Abi's NewsletterAbi Noda

Rescuing a project in progress

A friend of mine called. He was overwhelmed by a home renovation project that ballooned in size. What started as a simple kitchen countertop replacement turned into more work in the kitchen, new lighting throughout the house, a master bathroom gut rehab, and new flooring in every room. It became too…

Which DevOps patterns to implement in your team / company? | Version Lambda

In this article we present a generic high-level algorithm, how teams and companies can improve in matters DevOps.

Version LambdaLuben Alexandrov

Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

I jumped out of a plane to learn the benefts of stress

It turns out that within moderation, stress can even be good for you

The GuardianBen Ramalingam

Is Critical Thinking the Most Important Skill for Software Engineers?

Critical thinking will only become more important as AI tools spread more. How can you get better at this, and why should you reject jargon and “thought leaders?”

The Pragmatic EngineerGergely Orosz

The Winner’s Edge

A lot of otherwise talented people are too pessimistic to actually do anything. They are paralyzed by risks that don’t exist and greatly exaggerate them where they do, preventing them from being one of the best.

Farnam StreetFarnam Street

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:

https://techmanagerweekly.com

Have an amazing week!

Andy