The hottest Organizational Culture Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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5 Ways Agile Coaches Undermine Agility

Ageling on Agile • 159 implied HN points • 13 Oct 24
💼 Business Management Agile Methodology Coaching Organizational Culture Team Dynamics
  1. Agile is not a goal; it's a tool to achieve bigger goals like better teamwork and faster delivery. Coaches should focus on the benefits of Agile instead of just promoting the process itself.
  2. Some Agile Coaches act like salespeople, pushing their one-size-fits-all solution instead of customizing their approach to meet each organization's unique needs. Good coaches listen to what the company really needs first.
  3. Many Agile Coaches focus only on the teams without considering the rest of the organization. Everyone needs to understand how Agile impacts their work to truly benefit from it.

Close the Umbrella

The Engineering Leader • 159 implied HN points • 22 Sep 24
💼 Business Management Leadership Team Dynamics Organizational Culture Workplace well-being
  1. Managers should be honest and transparent with their teams. Hiding difficult information can backfire and leave everyone unprepared.
  2. Overprotecting a team can create dependence and limit their growth. It's important for team members to face challenges to develop their skills.
  3. A balanced approach is best. Managers can help their teams focus by filtering out unnecessary distractions while still being transparent about real issues.

Things We Learned Creating Technology Career Steps

It Depends / Nimble Autonomy • 19 implied HN points • 08 Sep 24
🕹 Technology Career development Leadership Organizational Culture Performance Management
  1. Clear connections between career steps and salary are important. When those links are vague, it can create misunderstandings and worries for employees.
  2. Career advancement should focus on behaviors and personal growth, not just achievements. While some people prefer clear advancement criteria, ambiguity can encourage conversations about development.
  3. Ongoing support and communication are essential after launching a new framework. Failing to keep it active can lead to confusion and make the effort feel unimportant over time.

TBM 320: From Fluffy Concepts to Concrete Outcomes & Behaviors

The Beautiful Mess • 555 implied HN points • 10 Nov 24
💼 Business Product Management Team Dynamics Behavior Change Organizational Culture Decision-making
  1. It's important to translate vague concepts into specific behaviors. Instead of saying you want to be 'data-driven,' describe actual actions that show you are doing this.
  2. Discussing behaviors as a team can spark valuable conversations and help everyone understand what needs to change. It allows people to share experiences and ideas in a meaningful way.
  3. When trying to improve team actions, focus on what gets in the way—like training gaps or social pressures. Identifying these barriers helps create better strategies for change.

Issue #11 - Dispelling the AI Hype Train

The Data Ecosystem • 139 implied HN points • 23 Jun 24
🕹 Technology AI Data science Business strategy Digital Transformation Organizational Culture
  1. AI needs a proper plan and strategy to work well. Companies shouldn't think they can just jump in without understanding how it will fit into their overall goals and data.
  2. Many AI projects fail because organizations overlook the importance of data quality and proper infrastructure. Good data practices are essential for AI to be effective.
  3. It's important to get everyone in the company on board with AI. This means training employees and creating a culture that embraces the technology, rather than fearing it.
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The Platinum Rule

Fish Food for Thought • 10 implied HN points • 11 Jun 25
💼 Business Leadership Management Organizational Culture Team Dynamics Employee engagement
  1. The Platinum Rule suggests treating people how they want to be treated, not just how you would want to be treated. This approach can help improve teamwork and morale in any organization.
  2. Understanding what motivates each team member is vital for their success. Everyone has different ways they like to receive feedback and support, so be sure to ask them what works best.
  3. Creating a culture that embraces individual differences leads to better performance and trust. When people feel understood and supported, they're more likely to do their best work.

The Rise and Fall of Intel: Lessons from Innovation and Organizational Challenges

Gad’s Newsletter • 44 implied HN points • 16 Dec 24
💼 Business Corporate strategy Organizational Culture Market Dynamics Technology Trends
  1. Intel struggled to adapt to changes in technology, especially with the rise of mobile devices and AI. They stuck to their old strategies and missed many opportunities to innovate.
  2. The company faced challenges because of its rigid organizational structure. Intel's way of doing things made it hard to cooperate with others and change, which limited their ability to compete.
  3. Intel's company culture went from being driven to perfection to becoming more bureaucratic and slow. This change hurt their ability to innovate and respond to new challenges in the industry.

What we publishing people can learn from that Cloudflare layoff TikTok brouhaha

How to Glow in the Dark • 359 implied HN points • 20 Jan 24
🎭️ Culture Publishing Media Workplace culture Social media Organizational Culture
  1. Lesson from Cloudflare layoff: There are useful lessons for everyone in handling layoffs and difficult conversations professionally.
  2. Lesson from Brittany's experience: Be prepared, question feedback that doesn't make sense, and stand up for yourself in professional settings.
  3. Lesson on organizational culture: Though industries may differ, there can be overlap in challenges like attracting talent and handling social media crises.

The Most Important Meeting of Your Year

DruGroup • 79 implied HN points • 14 May 24
💼 Business Leadership Management Diversity Meetings Organizational Culture
  1. The nominating committee is super important because it decides who will lead in the future. The people you choose will shape the agenda and priorities for your group.
  2. Having a diverse group of nominees is crucial. It helps ensure that the leadership reflects different backgrounds and perspectives, making the organization stronger.
  3. Leading a nominating committee well can make a big impact. If you prepare properly and focus on the right issues, you'll set your organization up for success for a long time.

Notes on Service Level Objectives

A Small, Good Thing • 19 implied HN points • 24 Mar 25
🕹 Technology Software Engineering Product Management Organizational Culture
  1. Service Level Objectives (SLOs) are important for understanding if services are reliable, but many organizations find them hard to use effectively. It's like a tool that sounds great but often doesn't work as well in practice.
  2. Adopting and managing SLOs usually requires a lot of effort and support from the whole team, not just the SREs. If the company culture isn't ready for it, SLOs often get ignored.
  3. There's a big gap between the theory of SLOs and how they're applied in real companies. Many teams struggle with choosing the right metrics and getting everyone to care about reliability over new features.

Reforming the DEI Reforms

Journal of Free Black Thought • 38 implied HN points • 10 Feb 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Policy Reform Diversity Issues Organizational Culture Social justice Meritocracy
  1. MEI stands for Merit, Economics, and Ingenuity, which aims to improve the hiring process by focusing on qualifications instead of identity. This approach encourages selecting candidates based on talent and capability.
  2. The original DEI framework emphasized diversity and inclusion but often led to perceived fairness issues and political agendas. MEI seeks to replace DEI with a more straightforward focus on meritocratic principles.
  3. Incorporating concepts like Economics and Ingenuity in MEI means prioritizing economically sound decisions and encouraging creativity in organizations. This could help recruit individuals who bring unique skills and perspectives.

systems *doing* and complexity *doing*

The Beautiful Mess • 79 implied HN points • 14 Nov 24
💼 Business Systems Thinking Complexity Theory Collaboration Organizational Culture Decision-making
  1. Bringing different people together in a fun way can help create new connections and ideas. It's important for everyone to share their unique perspectives.
  2. Sometimes it's better to wait and see what happens instead of jumping into action right away. This allows space for good ideas to emerge naturally.
  3. You can simplify complex issues to help understand them, but always remember to keep the messy details nearby so you don't lose important context.

When Orgs Become Siloed

Suzan's Fieldnotes • 98 implied HN points • 09 Feb 24
💼 Business Leadership Organizational Culture Teamwork Management
  1. Leadership is a shared experience, not an individual effort. A siloed leadership team can lead to a siloed organization. To shift organizational behavior, start at the leadership layer.
  2. Signs of a siloed culture include individualism, rise of 'poop umbrellas', influence behind closed doors, and apathy turning into fear. These signs can lead to missed business goals and a slipping company culture.
  3. Siloed cultures often form unintentionally due to tough market conditions, organizational changes, focus on individual parts instead of the system, and lack of intentional culture. Realignment starts by rallying the team around shared objectives, identifying desired team culture, and rewarding desired values.

Navigating the Shift from Feature to Product Teams and Building a Product Mindset

An Innovator's Sketchbook • 98 implied HN points • 04 Feb 24
💼 Business Product Management Feedback Team Dynamics Leadership Organizational Culture
  1. Transitioning from feature to product teams involves empowering cross-functional teams focused on outcomes and value.
  2. The localization industry is evolving with AI, leading to job destruction but also creating new business opportunities.
  3. Feedback is important for team growth, and using the 'Situation-Behavior-Impact' framework can lead to effective and powerful feedback.

Bill vs. Ted

The Radar • 59 implied HN points • 03 Apr 24
💼 Business Leadership Promotions Processes Organizational Culture Decision-making
  1. In promotion processes, advocacy, arbitrariness, and detachment can influence outcomes, sometimes leading to the wrong candidate being chosen.
  2. The complexity and overbuilt nature of promotion processes can obscure the best candidate, favoring manipulation over merit.
  3. Balancing objectivity and fairness in promotions is crucial, as promoting the right people leads to positive organizational outcomes.

A Kick in the Teeth

The Radar • 59 implied HN points • 29 Mar 24
💼 Business Management Compensation Leadership Organizational Culture Employee Relations
  1. Amazon shocked managers with a pay freeze despite record profits and successful quarters, damaging trust and morale.
  2. The pandemic revealed the dedication of Amazon managers, who now feel undervalued due to frozen pay based on share price fluctuations.
  3. Amazon's leadership actions risk eroding trust and confidence, raising questions about their motives, behaviors, and commitment to mutual benefit.

8 Ways Organizational Culture Kills Agility

Ageling on Agile • 79 implied HN points • 11 Feb 24
💼 Business Organizational Culture Agility Management Teamwork
  1. Implementing Agile in an organization goes beyond just claiming to be Agile; it requires a cultural shift.
  2. Having a hierarchical structure, lack of learning culture, and siloed responsibilities can hinder an organization's agility.
  3. Organizations valuing output over outcome, prioritizing individual efficiency, and fostering HIPPO culture undermine Agile principles and hinder effectiveness.

3 Ways To Thrive.

The Future Does Not Fit In The Containers Of The Past • 25 implied HN points • 19 Jan 25
💼 Business Leadership Teamwork Strategy Organizational Culture Innovation
  1. Finding balance is important. It means weighing the old ways against new ideas to grow and adapt.
  2. Unity helps teams succeed. When everyone shares a common goal and works together, they can achieve more than just individual talents.
  3. Integration is about blending different perspectives. It means accepting and using diverse opinions and ideas to create strong solutions.

Ivory towers jeopardize value creation

Ageling on Agile • 59 implied HN points • 04 Feb 24
💼 Business Management Collaboration Value Creation Organizational Culture Agile methodologies
  1. Ivory towers in organizations can create conflict and hinder collaboration between teams with different objectives.
  2. To foster value creation, it's essential for individuals in leadership positions to step down from ivory towers and actively collaborate with all stakeholders.
  3. Blocking the learning loop by maintaining ivory towers can lead to wasted time, effort, and money, hindering the organization's ability to adapt in a fast-changing world.

The Power of Skunkworks Projects (a conversation with ChatGPT)

An Innovator's Sketchbook • 98 implied HN points • 02 Apr 23
💼 Business Innovation Organizational Culture Product Development Corporate strategy
  1. Large companies must grow through expanding market penetration or entering new markets, either by inventing new products or acquiring other companies.
  2. Challenges of creating successful new products in large companies include bureaucracy, risk aversion, resource competition, resistance to change, and short-term focus.
  3. Skunkworks projects are effective for innovation in large companies, requiring careful planning, autonomy, cross-functional teams, open communication, agile processes, and customer-centricity.

How Process Impacts Your Culture

Ways of Working • 98 implied HN points • 19 Jul 23
💼 Business Organizational Culture Decision-making Workflow Employee engagement
  1. Our personal relationship with process can impact how we work and interact with others, showing our organizational culture.
  2. Processes are applied in organizations in areas like people processes, team-level processes, company-level processes, and customer processes.
  3. Processes in organizations aim to facilitate work, reduce risk, ensure consistency, but can also hinder creative thinking if taken too far.

Straight Talk

The Radar • 39 implied HN points • 28 Feb 24
💼 Business Ethics Leadership Communication Organizational Culture Transparency
  1. Dishonesty has become the norm in today's world, so being honest can help you stand out as a leader and build stronger relationships.
  2. Different types of misleading tactics like withholding information, spin, doublespeak, manipulation, and tactical deniability are commonly used in organizations.
  3. Practicing transparency, providing rationale for decisions, and communicating honestly can lead to increased trust within teams and ultimately improve overall performance.

Scaling engineering teams: Building career ladders

Brick by Brick • 18 implied HN points • 27 Jan 25
💼 Business Career development Human Resources Organizational Culture Leadership Employee retention
  1. Creating a clear career ladder is crucial for growing engineering teams. It helps everyone understand how to advance and what is expected from them.
  2. Collaboration is key when building this ladder. Getting input from the team can help define roles and ensure everyone feels involved and valued.
  3. Regularly reviewing and updating the career ladder keeps it fair and relevant. It’s important to adjust it as the team and company grow to continue supporting everyone’s development.

Why your manager sucks [Finance Fridays]

Technology Made Simple • 99 implied HN points • 12 Nov 22
💼 Business Management Leadership Organizational Culture Career development Work Relationships
  1. The Dilbert Principle explains how incompetent employees may be promoted to management to get them out of the way.
  2. The Invisible Man Principle highlights how mediocre employees may end up in important projects when all the top performers are busy with other tasks.
  3. The Peter Principle shows that competent workers may be promoted until they reach a role where they struggle, impacting their career progression.

Agile transformations to make stakeholders "happy" reduces trust

🔮 Crafting Tech Teams • 19 implied HN points • 28 Feb 24
💼 Business Stakeholders Trust Organizational Culture Incentives
  1. Balancing different forces in organizational culture is crucial for success, as there is never a perfect stillness.
  2. Pursuing agile transformations solely to please stakeholders can lead to a reduction in trust within the organization.
  3. It is important to be mindful of conflicting incentives and motives when shaping the culture of an organization.

Measuring the Productivity of Developers

burkhardstubert • 39 implied HN points • 04 Oct 23
🕹 Technology Software Development Productivity Metrics Organizational Culture Team Dynamics
  1. McKinsey suggests measuring developer productivity using new metrics that track time spent on development versus other tasks. This way, they want to see more time in real coding and less in meetings.
  2. Orosz and Beck argue that measuring effort or output isn't very useful because people might manipulate those numbers. Instead, they say to focus on the actual effects of the work, like the value that reaches customers.
  3. Team performance is more important than individual effort. It's better to measure how well a team works together than to judge each person separately.

Don't Squeeze the Brain

The Radar • 39 implied HN points • 17 Sep 23
💼 Business Innovation Leadership Creativity Organizational Culture
  1. Innovation thrives when the right conditions are set, not randomly. Building expertise through deep understanding is crucial for groundbreaking ideas.
  2. Leaders should model an innovative spirit by encouraging curiosity, asking questions, and creating a culture that champions creativity.
  3. Allowing idle time for reflection and rumination can lead to innovation. Overworking without breaks stifles creativity and hinders ingenuity.

The Hagakure #64: The Heart of W. Edwards Deming

The Hagakure • 113 HN points • 24 Aug 23
💼 Business Leadership Management Humanitarianism Organizational Culture
  1. W. Edwards Deming emphasized the importance of systems thinking and statistical process control in achieving quality and quantity in production.
  2. Deming's heart and compassion played a significant role in inspiring hope and confidence in the people of Japan, contributing to their rapid post-war recovery.
  3. Leading with compassion, embracing interconnectedness, and nurturing living systems over optimizing machines are key lessons from Deming's story.

Inside the culture clashes of F1 & Google

Make Work Better • 59 implied HN points • 07 Mar 24
🎭️ Culture Organizational Culture Tech industry
  1. Organizations tolerating bad behavior by leaders can lead to a breakdown of cultural norms and values.
  2. Google's once revered culture has come under scrutiny, revealing a slow-moving bureaucracy and lack of innovative products, prompting a need for reevaluation.
  3. Job cuts and layoffs at Google have negatively impacted employee morale and hindered the ability to do brave, inventive work.

Human mRNA

The Uncertainty Mindset (soon to become tbd) • 39 implied HN points • 12 Jul 23
💼 Business Innovation Management Organizational Culture Networking Strategy
  1. Human mRNA refers to people who connect different groups or teams within an organization. They help share important information that would otherwise stay hidden.
  2. These connectors are valuable because they can translate information between different teams, making it more useful for everyone. This translation helps ideas flow across contexts that may not usually interact.
  3. Encouraging this type of work is important for innovation. Companies should recognize and support these human connectors to help bridge gaps and foster creative solutions.