leadership

Is Zeigarnik affecting your team?

Yesterday I had a call with an old acquaintance, and while chatting about various team behaviours, he described a situation that reminded me of a topic I've been wanting to write on. It's called the Zeigarnik effect. In a nutshell, it's that we are

leadership

Torch leadership coaching

This week I had my last session with my coach. A couple of months back A Thinking Ape announced that they would be doing another round with an executive coaching platform, Torch. They'd run through it twice before, but as A Thinking Ape keeps

leadership

Cassandrafreude

Been trying to remember this word for the last few weeks; finally popped back into my head today while reading "How to be an Antiracist". Cassandrafreude: the bitter pleasure of things going wrong in exactly the way you predicted, but no one believed you

leadership

Engineering lead ++

Over the last quarter I've read a few books on indistraction and focus. A point that has stuck with me is about how identity and ideology plays into indistractable focus and discipline. It's much easier to find discipline on things that you value deeply.

career

Aligning personal narratives with business objectives

I recently started a new job as an engineering lead at a mobile game company. My responsibilities are typical for engineering management and technical lead roles, as well as a dash of project management. Among other things, I'm responsible for: the prioritization, scoping and

books

My favorite books on Engineering Leadership

A few people have asked, so here it is. I haven't read every book out there, so please tweet at me if I'm missing good ones! Peopleware by Tom DeMarko and Timothy Lister. This is the classic. Originally published in 1987, the premise is

leadership

Open-source as health check

An idea that Stephen and I have been bouncing around. Using an open-source methodology for internal software projects as a useful gauge on whether or not your software project can be considered "healthy". Even if there's no business interest in actually "

leadership

Developers considered harmful?

In the vein of Dijkstra's Go To Statement Considered Harmful, I'd like to rough out a new idea: "Developers considered harmful". Less experience, more risk Vancouver now has major offices for Microsoft, Mozilla, Slack, Kickstarter and HootSuite -- not to mention the