Last week the small but influential software company, Basecamp, made some internal policy changes. You can read their (much-amended) public announcement, as well as some well-informed background and a follow-up. … Continue reading Society inside companies
I’ve never given too much thought to “psychological safety”. It’s something I’d read about, and did see as probably interesting, but many of my day to day concerns seemed to … Continue reading The relevance of psychological safety
When locked in debate it’s easy to dig in and entrench our position. This is my position, if I explain it enough to you then you’ll come round to it. … Continue reading Practise being wrong
In recent days a number of high-profile US corporations have publicly criticised lawmakers in the US state of Georgia for implementing voting laws that particularly penalise voters of colour. The … Continue reading Companies taking a stand is basic humanity
Recently I wrote about the need to state the problem for any solution—that is, when proposing or discussing some kind of approach or thing to do, it’s really important to … Continue reading It’s good tactics to start with the goal
The other day I was speaking to a friend about having conversations with colleauges when you’re unhappy with something they’ve done. It’s important to be clear, and it’s important be … Continue reading The human bug report
While reading Kim Scott’s Radical Candor recently, I was struck by this (on page 93 of my paperback revised edition): The next time you spend 2 hours helping somebody edit … Continue reading Editing down for clarity
Quite often I have to write down rules or guidelines about what’s considered acceptable for some situation. These might be bullet points in a job advert (characteristics we want candidates … Continue reading Creating guidelines using reverse engineering
A couple of years ago a colleague sat me down to have a “difficult conversation”. He was unhappy with something I was doing, and wanted to tell me about it. … Continue reading Supporting difficult conversations
I used to work with a content production team. Every day they would write and source various articles, and every day they would publish a good deal of material. Then … Continue reading Determining success criteria
