Mentorship, Sharpening the Saw, and Technical Advocates

Lately I've been spending time reading Scott Hanselman's blog.  A few of his posts have really made me rethink how I look at leadership in general.  Here's a few links to some of my favorite posts:


Scaling Mentorship
I love this article because it focuses on a few things I care about most: activation, being a facilitator, and modeling feedback mentorships.  He discusses creating a board of directors for your life with people you can really confide but still able to see the big picture.  As a manager and advocate for others, this is one of the primary principles I live by and share.  He also promotes an interesting idea I'm currently pushing for: host mentorship meals.  The intent is a dinner where everything is FrieNDA, and how you can lend your privilege to help others.

Sharpening the Saw for Developers
This article is more a list of ways to engage your team and promote continuous learning.  A few of my favorites:

• Set aside time at work to read technical books / train
• Host technical brownbags
• Homework (I love finding a great book to help the team and delegate the book to a team member to learn and share findings for their growth and the team) 
• An interesting idea is an offsite Company Code Camp.  As a side note, 1-800 Contacts does a Live for the Impossible Day (or two) where everyone is working on something important to them for 24-48 hours.  Some amazing wins have come from these powerful innovation days.

11 Essential Characteristics for Being a Good Technical Advocate or Interviewer
Something I've always thought about was doing a soft-skills presentation on what I've learned over 20 years in the industry.  Starting at 17, I've learned a lot about tech, management, leadership, and learning how to advocate and lend privilege to others.  This article speaks to me because I love the different perceptions of a good presenter or ways to do a podcast.

The Power of Habit

"The difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you do." - Charles Duhigg

"The Power of Habit" is a powerful book that focuses on what Duhigg calls loops: cue, routine, reward.  A cue is something that triggers you do the habit, like seeing your running shoes or hearing discussing about your favorite sports team.  The routine is what the cue triggered you to perform.  The reward is the perceived benefit from performing the routine.  Hence why habits are so strong, that sometimes perceptibly and sometimes not, we engage in the routine we have been trained to perform, better or worse.

Duhigg drives the potential for changing your habits by changing your routine.  When biting your nails, consciously change your physical routine from the urge to perform a different routine.  The Habit Replacement Training he discusses is a powerful process to remove bad habits and replace them with powerful routines that can remove your need for willpower and drive positive behaviors.

Willpower is really the driving force of change.  Our potential is to remove the need to use willpower when we setup the cues and respond with good routines, and use that precious willpower to change for the better.

My recommendation: 8/10.

Where Are We?

I've been pondering having a place to write my thoughts as I learn and grow.  A lot of great changes have been happening at work. One of my favorite things about 1-800 Contacts is the company culture. People care about each other, are passionate about the work, and have a great work/life balance. These things haven't changed.  I love where we've been, but I am so excited where we're going.  Recently we've made some small changes that have made significant benefits:

Continuous Delivery

One of the best changes over the past year has been the move to continuous delivery for both code and database builds.  Our push, following the Accelerate model, has blown our deployment frequency out of the water, much less other statistics.

Continuous Improvement

In the last few six months, my teams have been focused on making small, simple changes that make our process better.  From small process improvements and eliminating waste to having QA test earlier in the process, these have been extremely values additions.  Another great win has been having one story per build to bring value faster to production.

Leadership

I love the 1-800 Contacts culture.  We are continually learning.  We are working towards being more proactive than reactive.  I love that new book reads are always floating around the company, often multiple times per month.  The latest book going around is The Culture Code.  The focus on building a safe place, vulnerability, and purpose go hand in hand with where our culture is improving.