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Don’t Just Ask for Feedback—Own It

I run a retrospective for my 20-person engineering team.  We do it once every three weeks.  So that’s 20 dev-hours every three weeks, which is quite a lot of time.  And it can very easily seem like a waste of time.

Some team members were frustrated with the meeting and let me know it.  Some wanted to tell me how to run the meeting, or do it for me.  I was also seeing that the meeting was inconsistent—sometimes it raised good issues, improved morale, made progress; sometimes it left people feeling anxious.  So I was feeling bad about my ability to run this process successfully.

At this point I could have tried to act on the complaints I was hearing, or I could have turned the meeting over to someone who had an idea of how to run it better.  But I realized I had another option, which was to own the process of improving the meeting by creating a productive context for feedback from my coworkers.

Here’s what I did.  I publicly admitted that people seemed frustrated with the meeting and we should improve it, and asked who wanted to give input on it.  When I get them together, I set up a productive context for feedback by:

Stating the goals, and making sure we agreed on them

Briefly stating the current process, and making sure we agreed it was an accurate statement

Stating the deficiencies with the current process, and making sure I covered everything, and understood the severity

Only then did we start to brainstorm solutions

I came prepared with a written version of 1-3 and a few proposals I’d already heard for 4 (this is important to acknowledge the feedback they had already given).  By the time we got to number 4, we were very well aligned and the solutions were pretty easy to come by.

With this process I quickly got productive feedback, I owned the process, my colleagues had their ideas incorporated, and the meeting got much better.

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Reading Themes for 2017

Learning a topic takes a focused effort, spread out over many weeks (since most of my week is spent focusing on work).  To help maintain my focus so that my reading builds on itself, I picked a few themes:

Engineering Management

In September 2016 I became a people manager.  Now I manage seven people plus one contractor, and the team is growing.  If I’m going to do this thing, I want to do it well, so I ought to receive the received wisdom.

Some books I might read:

The People Part

Managing the Unmanageable by Mickey W. Mantle and Ron Lichty

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Timothy Lister and Tom DeMarco

High-Output Management by Andy Grove

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

The Engineering Part

Code Complete by Steve McConnell

Clean Code by Robert Cecil Martin

Errors by Gerald M. Weinberg

Lessons Learned in Software Testing by Cem Kaner, James Bach, and Bret Pettichord

Happiness in Work

I have had several periods where I was totally happy in my job.  By now I’ve concluded it takes constant effort to create those periods.  I want to create them as often as possible.  I think that means being driven more by curiosity and the excitement of opportunity, and less by fear of failure.  I also think it means enjoying the process of work more than the outcome... I don’t buy in to the mythology of those who toil and slave away in agony for years to eventually reach a great success, after which they can sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labor.  I like how Zinsser put it in the quote I just posted: “What impels them is not the work they achieve, but the work of achieving it.”

There are a few people who’ve written on this subject directly.  I want to supplement that with memoirs of people who have achieved great things without martyrdom.

The Theory

Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Grit: Passion, Perseverance, and the Science of Success by Angela Duckworth (Since it’s new, I’m hoping it does a good job of referencing the research that comes before it)

The Existential Pleasures of Engineering by Samuel C. Florman (I was mostly attracted to the title of this one, but it also has good reviews)

The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers by Daniel F. Chambliss (Not a book, but a journal paper recommended by my brother)

The Practice

Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything by Carol J. Loomis

My Years with General Motors by Alfred P Sloan Jr.

Made in Japan by Akio Morita

Poverty and the Creation of Wealth

It seems to me that most disagreements between political factions in the US come down to the nature of wealth—will our society be better off if we enable more wealth creation, or if we redistribute the wealth we have.  I want to understand more about how wealth is created and how it is distributed in societies.

I’m looking for books that have more economic and historical than political analysis.  Here are some I’ve found (I think most of these were recommended by Bill Gates at some point):

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon

The Man Who Fed the World: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlang and His Battle to End World Hunger

The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty by Nina Munk

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley

Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization by Vaclav Smil

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The mathematician, the scientist and the philosopher, thinking and writing their way toward the center of a problem, are no less immersed than the composer, the artist and the writer in an act of commitment they can never recover or even explain. What finally impels them all is not the work they achieve, but the work of achieving it.

William Zinsser, Writing to Learn

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Two Kinds of Arrogance

When I was in high school, I learned that people who were being assertive to the point of being a jerk were not really cocky, or at least not truly confident.  They were actually the opposite—insecure, and blustering to keep people from finding out that they really didn’t know what they were talking about.  Once I learned the cause, I could take the insult less seriously.

For a while, whenever I saw arrogance, I assumed it was a reaction to fear or shame.  But I started to see a different kind of arrogance as well, one that really did stem from a high self-esteem.  I thought of it being too confident, but that never quite seemed right.  I mean, if someone’s too confident, is the correction really for them to be more timid?  Should they be taken down a peg?

I finally decided that there are two elements to how someone treats another’s ideas.  First, whether they feel secure in their own ideas.  Second, whether they value the second person’s ideas.  The second kind of arrogance is not a case where someone is too confident in their own ideas.  It’s a case where they undervalue the ideas of others. The correction is not to try to get that person to be less confident, but to get them to learn the value of the contributions of others.

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52 Books Recommended in “Writing to Learn”

Today I finished William Zinsser’s book Writing to Learn, described on the back as “a book on how to write clearly about any subject.”  Zinsser believes that we learn to write by imitation, so this book is not so much an instruction manual as a guide—a collection of passages of great writing in many different fields.

As a result, it is stuffed full of non-fiction book recommendations in subjects ranging from anthropology to mathematics.  Such care went into the assembly of these titles, I thought it should exist on the internet.  (In my experience, when I think something should exist on the internet, it has already appeared there a few dozen times, but this seems to be a little area of human knowledge that has so far been overlooked!)

So here are the 52 books mentioned in Writing to Learn.  51 recommendations, and one book (one!) that he did not like.  The one dis-recommendation is actually a favorite book of mine, so... there it is.  He does not recommend it, but I do.

In order of appearance...

Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas - Biology

The Medusa and the Snail by Lewis Thomas - Biology

The Pandas Thumb by Stephen Jay Gould - Paleontology

The Edge of Infinity by Paul Davies - Physics

God and the New Physics by Paul Davies - Physics

Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter - Mathematics

Metamagical Themas by Douglas Hofstadter - Mathematics

The Birth of the Republic by Edmund Morgan - History

On Philosophical Style by Brand Blanchard - Writing

The Art of Thinking by Vincent Ruggiero - Logic

Reasoning by Michael Scriven - Logic

The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith - Economics

The Non-Sequitur of the Dependence Effect by Friedrich von Hayek (a rebuttal to a chapter in the above) - Economics

The Necessity of Ruins by J.B. Jackson - Architecture / Landscape

The Vernacular Landscape by J.B. Jackson - Architecture / Landscape

The Immense Journey by Loren Eisley - Anthropology

Ever Since Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould - Evolution

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn - Philosophy of Science

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (here, he mentions three surrealistic novels he likes because they break the rules) - Fiction

Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon - Fiction

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig - Fiction

Grammatical Man by Jeremy Campbell - Language

Pluto’s Republic by Sir Peter Medawar - Philosophy of Science

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White - Writing

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman (dis-recommended 😭) by Richard Feynman - Autobiography

From Atoms to Quarks by James Trefil - Physics

Meditations at 10,000 feet: A Scientist in the Mountains by James Trefil - Physics

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton - Fiction

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold - Ecology

The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson - Ecology

How to See by George Nelson - Art

Meanings of Modern Art by John Russell - Art

Prints and People by A. Hyatt Mayor - Art

Looking at Photographs by John Szarkowski - Art, p115 

A Designer's Art by Paul Rand - Design, p117

The Art of Seeing by Aldous Huxley - Art, p121

Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation by E.H. Gombrich - Art, p122

So Excellent a Fishe: A Natural History of Sea Turtles by Archie Carr - Biology p126

The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin - Biology, p131

The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre by Edwin Way Teale - Biology, p138

Souvenirs Entomologique by J. Henri Fabre - Biology, p138

Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov - Autobiography, p144

Birds and their Attributes by Glover Morrill Allen - Biology, p145

The Youngest Science by Lewis Thomas - Medicine, p169

Growing Up in New Guinea by Margaret Mead - Anthropology, p175

The Hidden Dimension by Edward T. Hallj - Anthropology, p183

Children of Crisis by Robert Coles - Anthropology, p187

Relativity: The Special and the General Theory by Albert Einstein - Physics, p192

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi - Chemistry, p198

American Popular Song by Alec Wilder - Music, p211

Virgil Thomson (Autobiography) - Music, p222

The Oscar Saenger Course in Vocal Training by Oscar Saenger - Music, p227

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Jury Duty

I spent six hours in jury selection yesterday, and it raised a bunch of questions for me:

There are many times where the jury is instructed to think about something in a particular way.  For instance, the jury must consider a single believable witness to constitute proof beyond a reasonable doubt.  How does one think independently, but while using the rules of the law?

In the case of a violent crime, the standard of evidence is very high, since the punishment is so severe.  Justifiably so.  But if the person is most likely guilty, is there a less severe way of deterring them, or at least protecting the victim or future victims?

I put myself in the hypothetical position of thinking the defendant was guilty but not that there was enough proof offered for conviction.  It felt terrible.  I thought I might feel that I needed to help the victim in this case.  What should I do?  Would she accept help from me?

How are jurors expected to assess the credibility of witness testimony?  If we have 12 arbitrary people listen to someone and debate whether that person is telling the truth, will they get it right?

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Books That Influenced Me in 2016

January is almost over, so I’m going to squeeze in this last bit of reflection on the old year.

I took some time to write (from memory or my kindle library) a list of books that influenced my thinking in 2016.  I did not read all of these books in 2016, but I did use ideas from the books to make decisions or conversation.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman by Ralph Leighton and Richard Feynman.  This book is an existence proof that achieving great things is not incompatible with living a happy life.

The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen.  The idea of sustaining versus disruptive innovation is key to the understanding of whether and how a new institution can replace an old one.  I use it to analyze a lot of startups I learn about, but interestingly I don’t think it explains why my company is succeeding.

Built to Last by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras.  Working at a growing company, I often think about the difference between working in a company and working on it.  Built to Last is a reference point for me on what it means to build an institution that becomes self-sustaining.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.  One idea that keeps coming up for me is the importance of evaluating one’s own knowledge.  It seems to me that one of the biggest sources of error is overconfidence, because it prevents learning.  Kahneman teaches us how to spot systematic errors that come out of the nature of the automatic functions of our brains.

On Writing Well by William Zinsser.  Reading this book caused me to dramatically change my editing.  Where I used to spend most of my energy on line edits, I now cut words.  It’s remarkable how much clearer you can make a piece of text by removing the superfluous.

The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, George Spafford, and Kevin Behr.  The IT parallel of The Goal—an allegorical tale of the application of “lean manufacturing” principles.  One of my gripes with most business books is that they are heavy on bromides and short on details.  This book is a novel, and shows in detail the kind of work you might do to increase productivity on a technical team.  Listened to the audiobook and it was consistently engaging.

The Martian by Andy Weir.  A really fun read, where good engineering is a matter of life and death (this is often true, but seldom dramatized).  I think this is the ultimate story of “divide and conquer.”  The hero faces an impossible task with no support.  Psychologically, it should be crushing.  But he forces himself to focus on the immediate challenge.  When he solves it he moves to the next one.  A very helpful story for anyone trying to do something overwhelmingly big.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz.  Some people complicate an issue, and others simplify.  Ben simplifies many thorny business issues with a clear understanding of the essentials.  In particular, I’m thankful for the lessons on reducing politics in business.

Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham.  Also in the category of Silicon Valley essayists, Graham taught me about the difference between a maker’s schedule and a manager's schedule, and why it’s so hard for people to do work they love.

Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.  A few years ago I switched my focus from career goals on the scale of years to engagement and growth in my career on a daily basis.  Finding Flow builds on the identification of “flow” and its prerequisites (achievable challenge, clear goals, frequent feedback) to help you create the conditions for it.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck.  I’ve always thought of myself as someone who looks at challenges as opportunities for learning, but Dweck made these ideas much clearer and more impactful for me.  I find myself telling everyone about growth vs. fixed mindset, and frequently referencing it in my thinking.  It even made it’s way into our company’s values.

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull.  Listening to this book on my drive to work always got my energy up and ideas flowing.  But my number one takeaway was that it takes rare candor to bring creativity to its potential—that honest feedback is necessary for artists to refine their work.

One of the reasons I made this list was because I became aware of the idea (articulated by Venkatesh Rao in an interview on Longform that is interesting but I can’t wholly recommend) that we shape our identity by the things we choose to read.  So here is a part of the book-vector that describes my mind.  What’s yours?