The best read on Substack this week. I pride myself in my leadership and write about it, this article has, not will, has made me think about how I approach my day and team. Thank you
@Christopher Stanley what a compliment to start my day off by reading! I am just having my morning coffee and getting prepped for a presentation to senior leadership later today. This is the boost needed. Thanks for reading and sharing your feedback.
Happy to share @Ethics in Beta. WE do talk about Values constantly, and sometimes, especially when under immense stress, it can be more challenging to stick to them in action.
this is very timely, Colette! it’s so important for leaders to make sure that the patterns they preach are obvious and observable to the team, otherwise it’ll be in vain. great read.
even in relationships, being predictable brings trust and allows the other parties involved to be able to express the truth. may not be 100% the same in a business context but still applies.... to some extent.
As an engineering manager, the observability framing hit me differently than it might hit others because I use observability as a technical practice every day.
When a system behaves unexpectedly, we don't guess. We look at the logs. We trace the decision path. We find where the reasoning broke down. The system is queryable.
But most leaders run with no logs at all. Their team sees the output the decision, the reaction, the priority shift and has to reverse-engineer the reasoning on their own. When they get it wrong, they hedge. They wait. They stop trusting the system.
The line about prohairesis running in a black box is exactly it. And the fix isn't a values poster. It's instrumentation.
What's worked for me is narrating my thinking out loud before giving a decision in team settings. Not the conclusion the reasoning.
"I'm prioritising this over that because we said reliability matters more than features this quarter, and here's why I think this situation falls into that category." It feels exposed at first. But the effect on trust is immediate.
When your team can predict your decisions before you make them, you've instrumented your leadership. That's the signal that the system is observable.
I always have in me a notebook to write or scribble things that happened or I need to remember, it’s amazing how reading it at the end of the day, brings some clarity and those, dahhhh moments. Very useful.
I keep a notebook as well! I do not use it as often as I sometimes would like, as I get distracted by the keyboard, but when I do get a goo “scribble”, I often get a spark of ideas.
The best read on Substack this week. I pride myself in my leadership and write about it, this article has, not will, has made me think about how I approach my day and team. Thank you
@Christopher Stanley what a compliment to start my day off by reading! I am just having my morning coffee and getting prepped for a presentation to senior leadership later today. This is the boost needed. Thanks for reading and sharing your feedback.
Good luck with the presentation
Thank you for including my piece. I really appreciate it.
I keep thinking about your point around visibility. We talk about values constantly, but people respond to what they can discern in behavior.
Predictability builds more trust than statements ever will.
Happy to share @Ethics in Beta. WE do talk about Values constantly, and sometimes, especially when under immense stress, it can be more challenging to stick to them in action.
this is very timely, Colette! it’s so important for leaders to make sure that the patterns they preach are obvious and observable to the team, otherwise it’ll be in vain. great read.
Happy to share. It can be challenging to remember to these things in the moment of a busy workday.
even in relationships, being predictable brings trust and allows the other parties involved to be able to express the truth. may not be 100% the same in a business context but still applies.... to some extent.
Yes, it does not apply to just business. Absolutely right @Ame_data scientist
As an engineering manager, the observability framing hit me differently than it might hit others because I use observability as a technical practice every day.
When a system behaves unexpectedly, we don't guess. We look at the logs. We trace the decision path. We find where the reasoning broke down. The system is queryable.
But most leaders run with no logs at all. Their team sees the output the decision, the reaction, the priority shift and has to reverse-engineer the reasoning on their own. When they get it wrong, they hedge. They wait. They stop trusting the system.
The line about prohairesis running in a black box is exactly it. And the fix isn't a values poster. It's instrumentation.
What's worked for me is narrating my thinking out loud before giving a decision in team settings. Not the conclusion the reasoning.
"I'm prioritising this over that because we said reliability matters more than features this quarter, and here's why I think this situation falls into that category." It feels exposed at first. But the effect on trust is immediate.
When your team can predict your decisions before you make them, you've instrumented your leadership. That's the signal that the system is observable.
Thank you @Diamantino Almeida for sharing what has worked. We can all learn from each other.
You are right, that most leaders have no logs at all. We are doing and caught up in the moment of our 13 meetings in one workday.
I am going to try that thinking out loud technique you have mentioned here. Thank you!
I always have in me a notebook to write or scribble things that happened or I need to remember, it’s amazing how reading it at the end of the day, brings some clarity and those, dahhhh moments. Very useful.
I keep a notebook as well! I do not use it as often as I sometimes would like, as I get distracted by the keyboard, but when I do get a goo “scribble”, I often get a spark of ideas.