Crappy and the fear of rejectionseven days beforeMy colleague and I had this observation about companies who are in…Weak opinions, strongly held

Moving the ladder2022Riffing on the cost of opinion piece, I realized that there’s a…Orders of Humility2021Alex Komoroske and I had a great generative conversation today and as…Chatting with one of my coworkers, we recognized that there’s a pattern that is the inversion of the somewhat popular “strong opinions, weakly held” framework.

Rubber duck meetings2022When I am looking for new insights, a generative conversation with colleagues…This pattern is most commonly found in situations where the power dynamics are severe, like in a meeting between a VP and a junior engineer. While the VP might be sharing some thoughts they find interesting, the engineer will be having a hard time not interpreting them as directions. And if unable to resist that temptation, they may find themselves executing on a poorly-formed idea with the full conviction of the reporting level differential: weak opinions, strongly held.

Leading while sleepwalking2021Talking with one of my colleagues, we arrived at this interesting insight.…Google has several early-day legends, possibly apocryphal, about its founders’ idle musings turning into projects overnight, then hurriedly cancelled in embarrassment. “Larry said he wanted <foo>, so that’s what we’re doing now.” Nobody’s happy in this situation: the executive is frustrated in their inability to contribute nuanced perspectives, and the team loathes marching in resentment toward the destination they know is futile. If they’re lucky, there will be that one engineer who goes “Whaaat? This is bonkers!” despite the shushing of the colleagues. Or if not, the leading while sleepwalking trap gets set.

What the heck is strategy work?2022We turn the mastermind toward frameworks. The key objective of this role…Separating cargo from the train2023I’ve been puzzling over a problem that many engineering teams face and…Jankless2021As we Orient, examining our prediction error and updating our model of…Something will get optimized2021Complex adaptive systems tend to make it difficult to make guesses about…Playing to changethe same dayI have the most amazing job. In my role, I get to…Decision-making mindsetslinks here, 2023The opinionless stance can lead to weird stalemates when trying to make…In my experience, this pattern pops up more often in teams that struggle with the culture of examining ideas. To examine an idea, one needs to be able to hold it apart from people (and their power) associated with it, to turn it this way and that. Given how quickly we humans embed ourselves in our ideas, this mindset requires ongoing practice. The practice might be part of the process. When designing Blink governance, we wanted all feature proposals to go through a transparent, public process, with a forum for the proposal discussion to take place. The practice might also look like leads regularly sharing their missteps and reflecting on them. Whatever form it takes, this practice is often uncomfortable, feels like friction and something to be optimized away.