Where We Go Wrong with Collaboration
An early lesson I learned in my career was that whenever a large organization attempts to do anything, it always comes down to a single person who can delay the entire project. An engineer might get stuck waiting for a decision or a manager may think she doesn’t have authority to make a critical purchase. These small, seemingly minor hesitations ca
... See moreBen Horowitz • The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
At work, you’re expected to have intelligent opinions and propose smart solutions to problems. But, when you’re working on something that is very complex, it’s intimidating and exhausting to have opinions on the biggest challenges. It’s so easy to focus your attention on the issues that are easy to grok and which won’t (literally) blow up in your f
... See moreDaniel Burka • A Designer’s Guide to Parkinson’s Law of Triviality
Coupling and coherence are important, not just for Gene and Steve trying to move a couch or Maggie Taraska landing safely. Look around your own work environment and assess whether you are wired to win or not. Have many people have been placed into the same group arbitrarily, when the problems they’re dealing with are not tightly coupled? If so, thi
... See moreSteven J. Spear • Wiring the Winning Organization: Liberating Our Collective Greatness through Slowification, Simplification, and Amplification
The second come-to-Jesus moment needs to occur as soon as something goes out of sync. Even with the tightest project management, it is an absolute guarantee that the team will go slightly out of sync every once in a while. And as soon as it does, the confusion it creates can lead to people getting overworked or working inefficiently, which will gen
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