Latest Reads Etc December 2023

Hello!

Tomorrow is my team’s first annual LearnFest, a new tradition we’re starting where we decline all meetings and regularly scheduled programming and take a full day to learn. Learning of-course, happens in various ways throughout the year on the job, and taking a pause to learn in more traditional ways like reading and taking notes seems a little old-fashioned, but I still think it is a critical practice that we shouldn’t overlook. A full day unencumbered by the demands of our ruthless overlords - our own calendars. Instead of repeating the whole “I have too many meetings” refrain that is the pumpkin spice latte of the corporate world, let me stress upon you the importance of LearnFest being a full day. A full, remote day enables a complete physical transformation to soak in information. Without a dress code, a location to commute to, just that one emergency call about <insert non emergency here>, people have the opportunity to create space and conditions to slow down, breathe, think quietly, take notes on what they’re reading, process, internalize, and plan out how they might apply what they learn. A full day in comfy clothes and no performative tasks or professional cosplay will help us unclench our collective butts and allow our minds to wander. It’s an opportunity to go deep or broad or both.

If a team LearnFest appeals to you, I recommend setting it up as a combo of structured and unstructured - we’re starting the day with a Radical Candor workshop put together by my leadership team based on each of their teams’ feedback on what they most want to learn, and then I’ve put together resources including articles, books and courses on specific topic areas for the team to dig into throughout the day as a “suggested reading” component. And finally, they’re free to self-study for the remainder (majority) of the day. There are resources to focus on learning at 3 altitudes:

• Company - latest UX research, metrics, cheatsheets on key topics, and courses and resources from our internal learning portal to help them thrive as a part of the overall organization

• Team - core areas of professional development focused on collaboration, feedback, and essential elements of teaming well

• Self - Managing self, upwards and more individualistic concepts to help each person represent their work well and take charge of their personal growth

And the nice thing is we’re * all * doing it, and sharing back what we’re learning at the end of the day. Hopefully if the team loves this - we’ll do it again next year or perhaps even quarterly.

So with that, here are a few articles that I’ve shared with the team over the last year to aid in learning and even generate debate, as well as some of the books I’ve been recommending lately. I hope you find something here that sparks your interest.

Articles I keep coming back to

• Inside the Pixar Braintrust

• ‘Give Away Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups

• High Agency: What it is, why its important and how to cultivate it

• The Hard Truth About Innovative Cultures

• Speed as a Habit

Goal Setting & Writing Well

• How to write SMART goals (with examples)

• 6-step framework for setting high-leverage OKRs

• Build Credibility by writing a perfect executive summary

• Amazon’s Tools: 1-pager, 6-pager and Backwards Press Release

Managing up

• 15 Principles for Managing Up

• Mastering the art of managing up

Decision Making

• The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions

• Don’t be held hostage by consensus

• Root Cause Reasoning: An Inside Look at How Zoom Makes Important Decisions

• Why Engineers should invest in decision making skills early