Notes on Leadership (2): Alignment and Truth-telling

Dan Hon, again:

What you need to do is

repeat back what it is people want to do, and also repeat back why it is that they want to do that. Because you are not just trying to discover alignment, but you must create some, so that you (and all the dependencies involved in you achieving your work) can actually get things done and achieve whatever your goal is.

How, Dan? How?

If you want to do start building alignment, you’re going to figure out if you’re in an environment where you’re able to do at least a little bit of truth-telling. Nothing you’re going to say is going to be untrue. But the reaction to what you’re going to say may be predominantly on the dismay/dislike/active denial end of the spectrum of reception.

Oh boy, have I been there.

Ben: Here is what your organisation is doing wrong.
Org stakeholders: yeah, yeah. Just tell us how good we are.

June 25, 2022 leadership

Notes on Leadership (1): Decide to treat things as important

Dan Hon:

What you have is influence without authority. You can suggest that people do things, but unless these teams’ managers and directors decide to do those things, they’re not going to get done. You do not set priorities. Your peers set the priorities. You merely inform. This might hurt and if you’re not careful, it might also lead to burnout.

You need to make it easier for people to decide that what you think matters actually matters.

You can’t make people decide to treat something as important. But you can make it easier, and there are things you can do to make it easier.

June 25, 2022 leadership

You had a coordination headwind problem. You threw blockchains at it. Now you have two problems. You’re ngmi.

Venkat, obviously

June 25, 2022

No it doesn’t

When someone unironically says bitcoin solves this” or this looks like a DAO problem,” it is generally safe to assume they’ve never actually encountered any version of the problem they’re claiming bitcoin solves, or done any organizing, let alone decentralized autonomous organizing.

Venkat with a characteristic truth bomb

June 24, 2022

Facebook also recently announced a big new re-pivot to video because it’s a culturally dying website run by people who seem to actively loathe both the platform itself and the people who are still using it.

Ryan Broderick

May 21, 2022

Specificity Gradient

May 5, 2022

Memphis all the things (August Mood)

Apple Memphis Corridor

Apple Interiors via CARI Stream

April 27, 2022

Calendar wishlist

My work day is run by my calendar. I wish it weren’t so but a substantial part of my job is just talking to other people on schedules that work for them.

I use Fantastical by Flexibits. It’s great. Can’t say enough good things about it. The new Openings” and Proposals” features are worth the subscription price.

But.

I want a way to block out mornings in 30 minute blocks that are available to other people for booking and then I want to reserve 60-90 minute blocks in the afternoon for focussed work.

Wait, I think I just figured out how to do it.

As you were.

April 24, 2022

Recruiting for diversity in qualitative design research

A client asked about whether I had fully considered diversity in the discovery research plans I’d put together for them. They meant had I considered how the plan could possibly cover the right number of different backgrounds and abilities to be representative of their customer base.

They were thinking about diversity in as features of people. I think that’s not quite the right way to think about the problem.

If your goal is to learn about people with different types of neurodiversity (for example) then we should recruit people with different types of neurodiversity. But in design research our goal is often to learn how different people experience some part of the world and then decide how best to design something to support people who experience the world in those different ways. If you call these different ways to experience the world needs” I won’t mind. 1

So instead of doing research with people from many combinations of abilities and backgrounds, we should do research with people who have similar needs, regardless of their personal similarities and differences.

For example

If we’re making a website to present complex information we could try to do research with people from every possible background in our target audience. Or we could think harder and do research to learn more about different ways people with different abilities read and understand complex texts. We could then try to recruit people whose needs are similar regardless of their unique circumstances.

That way, even if we miss someone with a particular combination of ability and background, we can be more sure that the design outcome is going to support their need.


  1. I was never really a fan of the idea of needs” but it’s useful shorthand here.↩︎

April 23, 2022

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