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5 Questions That Reveal If a Company Has a Healthy Workplace Culture - by Claire Lew. Takeaway: A healthy workplace offers uninterrupted time, heated debate, access to the top leadership, reasons to value and be proud of it, and a culture of selflessness.
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Changing Company Culture Requires a Movement, Not a Mandate - by Bryan Walker and Sarah A. Soule. Takeaway: "[C]ulture change can’t be achieved through top-down mandate. It lives in the collective hearts and habits of people and their shared perception of 'how things are done around here.' Someone with authority can demand compliance, but they can’t dictate optimism, trust, conviction, or creativity." This also applies to the best-intentioned culture changes, including agile transformations. You might have the best intentions in the world, but if your team doesn't see the value or direction of the change, don't expect them to adapt.
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The Company Isn’t a Family - by David Heinemeier Hansson. Takeaway: "Whenever executives talk about how their company is really like a big ol’ family, beware. They’re usually not referring to how the company is going to protect you no matter what or love you unconditionally. You know, like healthy families would. The motive is rather more likely to be a unidirectional form of sacrifice: Yours."
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Creating the Dream Team: Transform Your Engineering Organization to Attract New Talent - by Andrew Hao. Takeaway: Start with evaluating your current culture's strengths and weaknesses. Be in tune with your org. Make sure you demonstrate that you value employees—whether that is talking up their accomplishments, investing in training, or just being there to talk.
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Culture Is the Spec, Process Is the Code - by Rich Armstrong. Takeway: Create every process around your culture. Just like your devs need specs in order to know what code to write, your company needs processes in order to implement culture.
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Engineering Culture at Airbnb - by Mike Curtis. Takeaway: Create a culture about helping others and celebrating their successes.
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Five Years, Building a Culture, and Handing It Off - by Kellan Elliott-McCrea. Takeaway: Build a culture of learning, generosity and values.
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How Netflix Reinvented HR - by Patty McCord. Takeaway: Hire only people who are able to put your company’s interests first.
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How to Get Engineering Teams to Eat Their Vegetables - by Duretti Hirpa. Takeaway: Good teams are supportive, have a sense of togetherness and don't blame their team members for their mistakes but instead learn from them.
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Innovation vs. Execution - by Marty Cagan. Takeaway: Not many companies are good at both innovation and execution. Assess your company in terms of both, and decide which one comes first.
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Lessons from 7 Highly Successful Software Engineering Cultures - by Mitch Pronschinske. Takeaway: Common themes across these seven engineering cultures include removing everything that hinders productivity; having as few rules as possible; hiring adults; having smaller teams and shorter projects; being kind and modest; not focusing on blaming, and focusing on learning from mistakes. Dan Pink's autonomy, mastery, and purpose are also common themes. Diversity is also important for some of these companies because, as research shows, diverse teams are more effective than homogeneous ones.
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Netflix Onboarding/Welcome Deck - by Roy Rapoport. Takeaway: Set clear expectations with your directs.
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On Failure and Resilience - by Katherine Daniels. Takeaway: "It can be a challenge if you’re starting with or coming from a 'blame and train' or 'blame and shame' culture to a 'blameless' or 'blame-aware' one, but the focus on desired outcome and how people can work together to help resolve a situation in the moment, as well as make the systems involved better equipped to handle situations in the future, can do wonders for system and organizational resilience."
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The Power of an Agile Mindset (video) - by Linda Rising. Takeaway: The agile mindset will enable you to see problems as failures as opportunities for learning.
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Programming Is Forgetting: Toward a New Hacker Ethic - by Allison Parrish. Takeaway: "Every practice, whether technical or artistic, has a history and a culture, and you can’t understand the tools without understanding the culture and vice versa. Computer programming is no different."
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Reorgs Happen - by Camille Fournier. Takeaway: "Reorgs are unlikely to solve all of your problems overnight. They are not a magic bullet exercise that fixes cultural issues or a lack of business strategy. If you aren't careful, your reorg will feel like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, a pointless waste of time for everyone involved. So don't be afraid to do them as necessary, but be realistic. This is a major disruption that impacts everyone, don't just do it for fun."
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Sorry, but Your Start-Up’s Team Isn’t Actually Any More Agile Than the Big Guys. Why You Really Still Can Win - by Jason Lemkin. Takeaway: "The BigCo problem is a combination of (x) impact/runway and (y) cross-functionality “unagility”. Here’s where start-ups can execute so much better."
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The Wetware Crisis: the Dead Sea Effect - by Bruce F. Webster. Takeaway: Do reorgs only if really needed, as they impact everyone in the organization and are not magic bullets that can solve all your problems.
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Up or Out: Solving the IT Turnover Crisis - by Alex Papadimoulis. Takeaway: Hire lots of people, find them mentors, and give them a choice to either get lots of experience then find another job or work hard in order to get promoted.
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Values Exercises to Build Vision in Your Company - by Happy Melly. Exercises to help your organization identify its values, and a downloadable list of 250 potential values to choose from.
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What Does It Mean to Be a Learning Organization? - by Joe Goldberg. Takeaway: "You're either building a learning organization or you'll be losing to someone who is."
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What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team - by Charles Duhhig. Takeway: The best teams are supportive and team members are sensitive to each others' feelings and needs.