Latest Reads Etc November 2023

Hello! Thank you for reading this blog or newsletter, whatever it is. :)

This month has been all about welcoming pleasant weather in Austin, allowing the cold to ease me into a period of quiet(er) reflection and contemplation. The reading vibe at our house is very ~memoirs and wisdom~.

The same is true at work, where those of us who follow the SaaS calendar are entering our 4th quarter which is filled with retrospectives and annual planning. In this flurry of old FY wrap-up and new FY welcoming, I’m thinking a lot about how I might help my team feel the passage of time more so they can celebrate their progress, growth, and accomplishments aka enjoy the journey. Quarters go by in the blink of an eye, work gets done, but energy is depleted and we don’t really FEEL time. This is a problem. So I’ve been thinking of team rituals that might put some energy back into the system and force the recognition of time…the internalization of learning…of progress. If you have any such rituals that you love, let me know.

Current Reads

• Between Two Kingdoms, Suleika Jaouad - Incredibly powerful piece of work by Suleika Jaouad who has quickly become one of the most intriguing creatives I follow. She can put her fingers around truth and hold it without it slipping, like it would for the rest of us, likely because she’s been through it. This memoir chronicles her Leukemia diagnosis, discovered right after her college graduation and subsequent move to Paris, and her recovery. The title is based on Susan Sontag’s 1978 work Illness as Metaphor where she writes “Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place."

• Life is What Happens In-Between - Tim Kreiger’s essay bolsters a point that struck me when reading Between Two Kingdoms - that we often wait for strife to conclude so that we may live again but “Until death It Is All Life” eh Miguel de Cervantes?

• Excellent Advice for Living - Kevin Kelly, who of-course has this great Ted talk on how the future will be shaped by optimists that deserves an annual rewatch. I love how he talks about Protopias, where things are slightly better, vs Utopias. And how solutions of today create problems of tomorrow, noting that problems don’t impede progress, they enable them…hence rejecting the concept of Utopia where there are no problems and therefore no progress. Anyway that’s the video, but the book is a lovely collection of short bits of wisdom that’s worth having and flicking through whenever you happen upon it.

• A great, lengthy interview with executive coach Sherali Karamov, covering, amongst many other things, exponential growth, blind spots, the power of experimenting with advising (“On average, experimentation has a success rate of ~5%, so statistically, only 1/20 will succeed…but when it does, its impact can be tremendous.”) and whether being too busy is a valid excuse for anything (spoiler: it’s not!)

Stuff to try with your team as you end the year

• I like the 3 Cs from Atlassian as a loose framework: Complete, Celebrate, Close.

• Retrospectives in Miro are the only way to fly in my book!

• As important as marking the end is marking the beginning. I swear by Pre-mortems as a fantastic regular team practice.

“Finish each day and be done with it.

You have done what you could.

Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day.

You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

―Ralph Waldo Emerson