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đŸȘ Smart Conflict, Bayesian Thinking, Facilitation, Cross-Discipline Teams, Silver Bullet Platforms, Boreout vs Burnout: TMW #417

Join me live on Weds Feb 5th for a chat about conflict!
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Thanks to Aikido for sponsoring this issue of Tech Manager Weekly - a no-nonsense security platform that shows you what matters and how to fix it– from code to CI to cloud.

Hey there, welcome to the week!

This Wednesday lunchtime, I'll be chatting live with leadership and conflict coach Alice Driscoll on the value of hard conversations, frameworks for managing conflict and the danger of a low-conflict culture among many other topics. Please do join if you would like to learn more about the healthiest ways to ensure conflict and feedback in your teams:

Smart Conflict: How to have hard conversations at work
Join our fireside chat, Smart Conflict: How to Have Hard Conversations at Work, and discover practical tools to embrace smart conflict. Learn why honest dialogue is crucial for high-performing teams, how cultural backgrounds shape conflict styles, and strategies to navigate ruptures and challenging feedback. Perfect for leaders and professionals looking to transform conflict into growth opportunities and enhance team performance.
CTO Craft

It’s been a record-breaking week for CTO Craft Con: London, with Early Bird tickets flying off the shelves! The final tickets are now on sale - there’s still time to join us. Expect world-class content, more networking opportunities than ever, and an unforgettable experience.

This is your exclusive access code for discounted tickets: Community-Spring-25

Can't make it to London? We're in Toronto this May, Berlin in September, and have plenty of online events and regional mixers in between. Find out more here: https://ctocraft.com/events/

OK, on with the links, see you next week...

Andy @ CTO Craft

CTO Craft Events

Don't forget, as a TMW subscriber you have access to the Member Pricing for upcoming CTO Craft Con events.  You can unlock membership pricing by using the following access codes in the checkout when purchasing tickets:

CTO Craft Con: London 2025 - Community-Spring-25
CTO Craft Con: Toronto 2025 - Community-Toronto-25

CTO Craft Con: London 2025
CTO Craft Con will bring together over 500 Chief Technology Officers and other senior technology leaders from the most exciting start-ups, scale-ups, unicorns, and big tech companies to elevate their engineering culture in London, March 2025.
CTO Craft Con London 2025
CTO Craft Con: Toronto 2025
CTO Craft Con will bring together over 200 Chief Technology Officers and other senior technology leaders from the most exciting start-ups, scale-ups, unicorns, and big tech companies to elevate their engineering culture in Toronto, 2025.
CTO Craft Con: Toronto 2025

Reads of the Week

To Change The System Of Work We Must First Change Leaders’ Mental Models
Attempts to change an organisations culture is a folly, it always fails. People behaviour (culture) is a product of the system; when you

MediumScott Millett
This Is How You’re Eroding Accountability
Accountability is the only way that anything gets done at scale.
Stay SaaSyStay SaaSy

From our Sponsors

Partner Spotlight: How Aikido Turned Crusty Security Tech Into Something Devs Love

We’re excited to spotlight Aikido Security, a forward-thinking cybersecurity company. They’ve been disrupting the industry with a unique, no-nonsense approach. This post highlights their 2024 achievements, 2025 predictions, and our collaborative success.

Check it Out

A huge thanks to all our sponsors and partners, who make Tech Manager Weekly and the CTO Craft community possible:

Aikido, AWS, Albany Partners, Code Climate, Coherence, Damilah, DoIT, Google Cloud, Jellyfish, Plandek, Skiller Whale, Softwire, Sema, Uplevel, Vention, YLD

If you're interested in sponsoring TMW or any of our events, drop us a line at partners@ctocraft.com.

Leadership, Strategy & Business

How Bayesian Thinking Can Save You From Bad Decisions
Understanding Bayesian Thinking Through Real-World Decisions
Scaling NotesAlex Kroman
Is engineering strategy useful?
While I frequently hear engineers bemoan a missing strategy, they rarely complete the thought by articulating why the missing strategy matters. Instead, it serves as more of a truism: the economy used to be better, children used to respect their parents, and engineering organizations used to have an engineering strategy. This chapter starts by exploring something I believe quite strongly: there’s always an engineering strategy, even if there’s nothing written down. From there, we’ll discuss why strategy, especially written strategy, is such a valuable opportunity for organizations that take it seriously.
Irrational Exuberance
My Favorite Facilitation Books âœđŸ» Drawn to Leadership
If you, like me, are running out of patience with bad meetings, here are my picks for the best writings on facilitation: three evergreen books that have helped me improve meeting culture by becoming a better facilitator.
Claus HöfeleClaus Höfele
The Management Paradox
Everything simple is wrong. Everything complex is unusable.
Scale & SignalScale & Signal

Culture, People & Teams

What If A Team Doesn’t Want To Improve?
Short personal thoughts, reflections, and ideas
The LiberatorsBarry Overeem
Cross-Discipline Approaches
Why crossing department and discipline boundaries is important
Fish Food for ThoughtMike Fisher
TBM 337: Pirates and Garbage Cans
Why do problems fester for so long in companies? Why can it take so long for teams, managers, and leaders to work out their shit, by which point you have far fewer options?
The Beautiful MessJohn Cutler
Unpopular Defaults for High-Performing Tech Organizations
“No one ever quit!” “Look at our hackathon!” “We hard-allocate time to fight tech debt.” Ostensibly, good things. In reality? Just the advice to follow
 if you want to lead a mediocre team. You’re 

Aviv Ben-Yosef

Technology, Operations & Delivery

DeepSeek: Five things business and technology leaders need to know
What do business and technology leaders need to know about DeepSeek? We cut through the noise with five key things, including what to do next.
ThoughtworksMike Mason
Bad idea: Platforms automatically improve productivity.
As I’ve said previously, productivity is the ratio of the value of Impact to the cost of Effort.
MediumJason Yip
Quick Steps for a Scrum Team to Improve the Process
Make your stand-ups short and concise, focus on value added
Booking.com EngineeringEgor Savochkin
It’s OK to hardcode feature flags
The safest and most reliable way to deal with feature flags is to hardcode them
mendhak

Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

work boreout versus burnout - How to Create Customised Solutions for both
Learn all about ho to enhance your orkplace engagement by tackling staff boreout and burnout from the outset.
Engage for Successbinujacob
The Wisdom of Insecurity
Finding consolation in turbulent times
Human-Centric EngineeringJohn Durrant
How to develop EQ as an engineer or a manager
People with high EQ are often great team players, great collaborators and overall great people to work with. This is how you can develop EQ!
Engineering LeadershipGregor Ojstersek
How to feel bad and be wrong
OR: Rickets, please!
Experimental HistoryAdam Mastroianni

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

Published by:

Andy Skipper