Eri on the interwebGreat service is delivered by happy employees. Great work is produced by motivated, empowered, and engaged people. So how do we create better work environments? Better processes? Better management? Better leadership? Better people? Can these be designed? This is a collection of articles on emerging practices and stories on redesigning the work experience.
If I’ve learned one thing I’m sure of in the whole of my career, it’s that the most valuable thing you can do in almost any situation is to create shared understanding.
— Amy Hupe (@Amy_Hupe) April 8, 2020
So many inefficiencies in our work stem from wrongfully assuming we’re on the same page.
Agile or not, lots to reflect on and love in this thread on agile teams (threadreaderapp) by Susanne Husebo. It start likes this:
and gets better and better. See the original tweet here.
Skip the hype cycle, recognise your biases and default position as well as other’s biases and default positions to look at problems in context of their changing conditions. This is the overriding message of The Heretics Guide to Management by Paul Culmsee and Kailash Awati. This book was recommended to me by a sage and savvy colleague and friend. It opened my eyes to just how attached I was to certain tools, processes, and practices — namely Design Thinking. This book challenged me to think about just how unproductive we can be when we don’t acknowledge our professional culture wars. If you hold on to traditional strategy methodologies, if you think the latest innovation model is the best way, if you think design thinking is the only way, read this book.
Here’s my review on Amazon:
A refreshing, humorous, and well researched take on the hype cycle of management and innovation frameworks and why no model is a substitute for understanding context and conditions when working through ambiguity. This book’s critique on management trends is underpinned by thoughtful discussion on how we think and how we react to ambiguity; the limits this brings to problem framing, management, and effective work. I came away from this with better critical skills to assess not only my work environment but also myself.
“… The ability to listen to new ideas, the ability to listen to new voices, gives you the ability to adapt … it’s the number one quality besides competence.” — Nilofer Merchant on the Boss Level podcast.
Highly recommend the rest of the podcast episode too for conversation on the gap between strategy and delivery and how a rethinking of the division of labour between the thinkers and the doers makes for better business.
Ralph Affleck is king of the maker’s movement. Watch him in action for a beautiful dose of inspiration.
— David J Bland (@davidjbland) April 9, 2015