127: Empowering Teams for Growth and Innovation

Empowering teams to foster trust and innovations, meetings and productivity

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Off Topic: Meetings for Effective Collaboration

What meetings are essential for our best work? Do our meetings have explicit purposes and structures? How are meetings facilitated and documented? How do we share meeting outcomes and output? Why do we have recurring meetings, if any? How does our meeting rhythm support or hinder our work? Do we need any specific tools or materials for our meetings? How can we improve or drop meetings that no longer serve us? Humans crave connection and relatedness. Some meetings should align with human nature, while others should help us transcend it.

Avoid overpreparation and excessive control, as they may cause you to overlook critical aspects of the team. Remember, data is not the same as information and is not equal to knowledge. Likewise, learning does not guarantee mastery or lead to wisdom. Move away from legacy information-sharing methods that push information without consent. Use real-time communication channels instead.

Chaotic and efficient meetings occur when fewer participants, whether a call or a group chat. Avoid group chats, especially for sensitive topics. Treat them like a sauna: schedule them and be selective.

Meetings in the workplace have room for improvement, especially with the rise of remote work. One significant issue is that meetings often become a means of sharing information. Software Engineers' work is abstract, and this tendency carries over to how meetings are conducted. Yet, more than discussing ideas alone is needed to translate into action or progress. Abstract concepts may sound appealing at the moment but fade from memory.

Remember, meetings serve as a communication tool. The information exchange rate in meetings could be higher, and adding more people to the group does not improve it. Sharing information remains one of the main activities in meetings, rather than executing projects and accomplishing tasks.

[^1]: Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

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Unrelated: Empowering Teams for Growth and Innovation

Innovation thrives in an authentic culture where operations and invention blend. Create an environment where teams can learn and grow through experimentation and failure. Embrace the reality of a changing world and decentralize control to empower teams to adapt and make decisions. 

The greatest obstacle to progress is ourselves. Embrace difficulties as opportunities for personal growth and success. Rely on principles and think instead of seeking borrowed wisdom. Challenge the addiction to predictability and control and embrace uncertainty. Address organizational debt by eliminating structures and policies that no longer serve us. Foster trust and empower individuals to exercise judgment and do what's right.

Embrace the uncertainty of innovation and allow for variation and divergence. Make disciplined bets in both good and bad times. Integrate developers, testers, and operators to create a continuous process. Manage the portfolio of concepts, prototypes, and products.

[^1]: Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?