Everything Is Content: WordPress in the 2020s

Over the last decade, WordPress has established itself as the go-to content management platform for online newspapers, magazines, and blogs of all sizes. It’s also begun to gain footholds in the broader world of publishing: corporate newsrooms, brand sites, and content marketing vehicles. Despite WordPress’ commanding presence – nearly a third of the web’s top million sites – there’s still significant opportunity in up-ending more bluechip offerings, like Adobe Experience Manager and SiteCore, as the “first CMS” for large enterprises.

Notes on Escaping the Build Trap

Last year while thinking about product management in infrastructure

I read Cagan’s Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love,

which I thought was a solid book, roughly summarized as “use rapid experimentation to guide product innovation.”

It’s apparently the time of year when I read about product management, and having heard quite a bit of praise for

Melissa Perri‘s

Escaping the Build Trap, I decided

What Do Executives Do, Anyway?

What do executives do, anyway?

An executive with 8,000 indirect reports and 2000 hours of work

in a year can afford to spend, at most, 15 minutes per year per

person in their reporting hierarchy… even if they work on

nothing else. That job seems impossible. How can anyone make any

important decision in a company that large? They will always be

the least informed person in the room, no matter what the topic.

Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How. – POLITICO

Magazine

A crisis on this scale can reorder society in dramatic ways, for better or worse. Here are 34 big thinkers’ predictions for what’s to come.

Illustration by DAQ

By POLITICO MAGAZINE

03/19/2020 07:30 PM EDT

For many Americans right now, the scale of the coronavirus crisis calls to mind 9/11 or the 2008 financial crisis—events that reshaped society in lasting ways, from how we travel and buy homes, to the level of security and surveillance we’re accustomed to, and even to the language we use.

Brick by Brick

6 min read

Brick by Brick

by Josh Sloat | Mar 17, 2020 | Commentary |

A lot of folks have been asking what I’ve been up to since moving on from my post as Head of Product and Tech at Axios. The short answer is, things I should’ve focused on much sooner. The longer answer is shared below, expressed with far more digital vulnerability than comes with my default programming.

Leader as Avatar (Ed Batista)

The English word avatar is derived from the Sanskrit avatāra, meaning “to descend,” which came to signify a deity who has come down to earth and taken human form. Lord Rama, above, was the seventh avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, summoned to defeat a demon-king.

In a secular context, an avatar is a personification that represents a larger entity, and it’s a concept that comes up frequently in my coaching practice. We often view leaders–especially CEOs–as avatars of the organizations they lead, and leaders may see themselves in the same way–especially founders.

Selling into a Crisis (Rights and Wrongs)

1. Sell to the need – not the situation. In times of any crisis people are managing and adapting to it 24×7. They know their problems all too well and so will most likely react negatively when being “educated” to what their situation is. Rather, most people will be tuned to the problem they have and any matter of fact messaging about what your product does will be picked up. For example, most people have been busily expanding their remote working/collaboration capabilities and capacity and will likely be ripe to hear about anything that can help them with that – you don’t need to mention it’s because of Covid-19, or any other crisis.
2. Support your existing customers and make genuine offers of help. Many businesses are doing extraordinary things to support their customers. A lot of companies are actively networking with others in particular sectors and across supply chains and so, if you have a great solution with great support then word will get out.
3. Amplify learning. In times of crisis people innovate in the use of products/services, in fact they may stretch the hell out of them to get what they need. Therefore, figure out a way of sharing such innovation with your wider customer base – with permission or suitably anonymized. This will help people, and will likely drive new sales or an increase in deployments at existing customers over time.
4. Seek feedback. This is a prerequisite of 2 and 3: ask your customers what else they need and seek to be maximally flexible especially in eliminating bureaucracy, for example: if your customer needs another 5000 users deployed on your product/service then enable it – figure out the contract/payment details later, they will come through.
5. Start planning your products for the new normal. The stretching of your products/services now are, in essence, your customers defining your product roadmaps for the next 24 months. Listen to it. A lot of things won’t return to the way they were after this crisis, just like other crises have been jolts to create new modes of working or entirely new business models.
6. Support hardship. There are plenty of small businesses, medical facilities, not-for-profits, and other entities that might need your products/services. If you can, then set them up with some capability. Do this for altruism – it might pay off later (brand, future sales, adjacent benefits) but it might not.
7. Look after your employees. You can’t do 1 through 6 if your employees, your contractors or supply chain, aren’t feeling protected.

We’re not going back to normal

Getty images

Tech Policy

Social distancing is here to stay for much more than a few weeks. It will upend our way of life, in some ways forever.

Mar 17, 2020

Getty images

To stop coronavirus we will need to radically change almost everything we do: how we work, exercise, socialize, shop, manage our health, educate our kids, take care of family members.

Open Space, Deep Work, and Self-Care

My coaching clients are typically senior leaders with rapidly growing or very large organizations who are responsible for hiring a management team, identifying a winning strategy, and building a culture that supports their goals. A theme that emerges consistently in my work with them is the importance of open space, deep work, and self-care. What do I mean by these terms, and what’s their significance for effective leadership?

Your Mission Is To Produce Outcomes, Not Outputs | Barry O’Reilly

Most companies are looking for outcomes, unfortunately the majority of what they get is output.

Everyone from executives to entrepreneurs don’t want to create products, they want what a product can create for them—truly extraordinary customer benefits. They don’t want to solve point problems, they want better, faster and cheaper results. They are looking for a competitive advantage for their customers to experience, value and love.

How to Think (More on Open Space and Deep Work)

Most of my coaching clients are senior leaders in rapidly growing companies, and they often find themselves in the midst of a difficult transition. Previously they were in a position to add value by doing–because they knew the most about the product, or were closer to the customer, or were more experienced than their colleagues, they could simply execute more effectively than everyone around them. But as the company has grown larger and more complex, and as they’ve hired people with greater expertise and stronger functional skills, they find that they’re no longer able to add value in the same way. As I’ve written before,

Leadership as Professional Practice (Ed Batista)

In the Enchiridion (or handbook) of Epictetus [1], the Stoic philosopher offers guidance to those of us with high aspirations:

In every act observe the things which come first, and those which follow it… A man wishes to conquer at the Olympic games, I also wish indeed, for it is a fine thing. But observe both the things which come first, and the things which follow… You must do everything according to rule, eat according to strict orders, abstain from delicacies, exercise yourself as you are bid at appointed times, in heat, in cold, you must not drink cold water, nor wine as you choose… And sometimes you will strain the hand, put the ankle out of joint, swallow much dust, sometimes be flogged, and after all this be defeated. When you have considered all this, if you still choose, go to the contest.

(more…)

Firebreaks and Rapid Repairs

I don’t get to write very often about productivity these days. I’m too busy doing things. There’s some sad irony there.

Yet, there’s two points that have been so critical, so valuable, so life-affirming… that I so often see people doing the exact opposite of what’s correct in… that I thought I’d spend my morning writing this up.

Images via Wikipedia article on “firebreak.”

1. Firebreaks: Because When Your Mind Can’t Be Trusted, It Really Can’t Be Trusted

The Making of a Corporate Athlete

Leer en español

If there is one quality that executives seek for themselves and their employees, it is sustained high performance in the face of ever-increasing pressure and rapid change. But the source of such performance is as elusive as the fountain of youth. Management theorists have long sought to identify precisely what makes some people flourish under pressure and others fold. We maintain that they have come up with only partial answers: rich material rewards, the right culture, management by objectives.

Open Loops (Leadership and Uncertainty) (Ed Batista)

One of the most significant steps in a leader’s development is cultivating the ability to 1) tolerate greater uncertainty 2) over longer periods of time 3) on a larger number 4) of increasingly important issues. A coaching client once described it as “living with open loops.” What makes this so challenging is that we’ve evolved a strong preference for certainty because the predictability of recurring patterns in familiar situations allows us to minimize the expenditure of attention and concentration, which are finite resources. David Rock, Director of the NeuroLeadership Institute, discusses the mental processes at work here:

That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief

HBR Staff/d3sign/Getty Images

Leer en español

We’ve made our coronavirus coverage free for all readers. To get all of HBR’s content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter.

Some of the HBR edit staff met virtually the other day — a screen full of faces in a scene becoming more common everywhere. We talked about the content we’re commissioning in this harrowing time of a pandemic and how we can help people. But we also talked about how we were feeling. One colleague mentioned that what she felt was grief. Heads nodded in all the panes.

Production Oriented Development

read

Throughout my career, I’ve developed some opinions. Some have worn particularly deep ruts,

reinforced by years of experience. I tried to figure out what these

had in common, and it’s

the idea that code in production is the only code that matters. Staging doesn’t

matter, code on your laptop doesn’t matter, QA doesn’t matter,

only production matters. Everything else is debt.

This perspective probably comes from years sitting in between

Micro Feedbacks — Management Advice for Technical People Managers

Tal Joffe Nov 26, 2019 · 10 min read

Intro

As technical managers in the software industry, we are accustomed to talking about technical best practices but not so much about management best practices. Most of us started in technical roles, and were trained for that, but when we moved to a managerial position we just had to figure it out by ourselves.

Hiring Engineering Leaders

This post is about the interview process for an engineering leader. Hiring involves a lot more than the interview part – everything from reviewing resumes, sourcing great candidates, getting them to come onsite, the interview itself, evaluation, offer, and close. In this post, I focus primarily on mechanics, propose a concrete interview process, along with sample questions for the non-technical parts, and propose a template that companies can use to build a custom process suited to their needs. This post is based on my long experience managing engineering teams at Google and Facebook and interviewing numerous amazing managers for various roles. This entire post is available as a coda doc that you can duplicate and use.

Rethinking the Daily Stand-Up

Different engineering teams function in different ways. Each employ various strategies and processes, informed and shaped by changing technologies, markets, personnel, competitive landscapes, and company culture.

But one ritual — the daily stand-up — has become particularly popular with engineering teams around the world. The format is remarkably similar in every organization; teams get together for a short amount of time and run through what each person did yesterday, what they’re working on today, and anything that’s blocking them.

A Blueprint for Internal Open Source

Skyscanner Engineering Mar 13, 2018 · 5 min read

By Chris Downey

Internal Open Source (aka Inner source) is a topic that I’ve seen come up in lots of different places, but I’ve never seen it first-hand translate into anything beyond an interesting discussion.

In Skyscanner, an internal blog generated a slack discussion, which soon became a working group of interested people from different parts of the company. We all shared a desire to create a workable Inner source approach for Skyscanner and this is how we went about it.

The a16z Marketplace 100 – Andreessen Horowitz

Today we introduce the Marketplace 100, a ranking of the largest and fastest-growing consumer-facing marketplace startups and private companies.

Over the past few decades, marketplaces like eBay, Airbnb, Uber and Lyft, Alibaba, and Instacart, have become some of the most impactful companies in the world economy. Collectively, millions of individuals and small businesses make a living operating on these platforms, where hundreds of billions of dollars of goods and services trade hands each year. Today, ridesharing platforms alone account for roughly 1 percent of US household income and there are an estimated 75 million gig workers in the US, and growing, according to the Fed. By possessing powerful network effects, marketplaces can become huge economies themselves. Over time, such companies have revolutionized a series of diverse industries, from travel to food to childcare. Marketplaces are at the center of many of society’s most important trends—the gig economy, the new generation of creative work, microentrepreneurship, and beyond. There’s much more to come. As investors in Airbnb, Instacart, and many others, it’s no secret that we’re bullish on (if not obsessed with) marketplace companies.

The Alchemy of Leading

Here in the Wasatch mountains, 2020 arrived with fresh snowfall and the promise of more powder to come in the first few days of the new year. For those who traveled here for the Christmas and New Year holiday in hopes of an idyllic winter vacation with heaps of snow and cozy evenings around the fireplace, their wish came true. For me, the holidays have been a delightful mix of spending time with friends and family, reviving a tradition of skiing on Christmas morning, and with the arrival of the New Year a healthy dose of reflection—not just of the past year, but of the past few decades.

How MeUndies Connects Multiple Teams with Different Project Management Tools

Comfort is everything at MeUndies. Well, comfort, killer designs, charity, and efficient workflows. The first three are obvious if you explore the MeUndies website, where you can learn about the company’s sustainably sourced, naturally soft materials for super-comfortable underwear, their dedication to creating fair paying and empowering jobs, and browse new designs rolled out each season.

But under the hood, Vicky Tatar, Director of Project Management at MeUndies, built and maintains a simple but robust system using Asana and Pivotal Tracker to manage projects between different teams.

Opinion | Is the Coronavirus Outbreak a Pandemic Yet?

Is the Coronavirus Outbreak a Pandemic Yet?

It’s now clear that the epidemic was never going to be contained. What’s next?

Mr. Osterholm is an infectious disease expert. Mark Olshaker is a writer and documentary filmmaker.

A Christian church service in Seoul on Sunday. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in South Korea jumped in recent days.Credit…Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters

On Tuesday, Feb. 18, no coronavirus cases had been reported in Iran. On Sunday, the government announced 43 cases and eight deaths. Some 152 cases (and at least three deaths) were confirmed in Italy on Sunday, up from three cases on Thursday. The number of infected people in South Korea jumped to 763 (and six deaths) in just days.

Gross Company Happiness

Humans love measuring things. Mostly because they love comparing themselves to their neighbors, which involves measuring things.

Countries measure themselves using Gross Domestic Product (GDP), companies use EBITA, and individuals use their net worth (indicated via fancy watches, sneakers, and Instagrammed vacations).

When we look for ways to measure ourselves, we are drawn to easily quantifiable metrics (like money), and then naturally we invest in the things we are measuring (like working hard at our jobs to get promoted). We want instant gratification for our efforts, which companies are only too eager to provide. Less clearly quantifiable things, such as the strength of a marriage, are more likely to get overlooked when allocating your efforts. The net result is focusing on things that won’t make you happy while neglecting the things that actually do—ergo, suffering.

The Simple Dutch Cure for Stress – Facts So Romantic – Nautilus

*“Uitwaaien” is a popular activity around Amsterdam—one believed to have important psychological benefits.*Photograph by John Loo / Flickr

Recently I was in San Francisco, a city known for its tech companies, steep hills, and fierce winds. Each day I’d run around the neighborhood and up through the park, ending with a spectacular view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Back in my AirBnB, I’d feel energized and refreshed, fingers tingling from the breeze. It was cold, exhausting, but completely exhilarating.

How Will You Measure Your Life?

Editor’s Note: When the members of the class of 2010 entered business school, the economy was strong and their post-graduation ambitions could be limitless. Just a few weeks later, the economy went into a tailspin. They’ve spent the past two years recalibrating their worldview and their definition of success.

The students seem highly aware of how the world has changed (as the sampling of views in this article shows). In the spring, Harvard Business School’s graduating class asked HBS professor Clay Christensen to address them—but not on how to apply his principles and thinking to their post-HBS careers. The students wanted to know how to apply them to their personal lives. He shared with them a set of guidelines that have helped him find meaning in his own life. Though Christensen’s thinking comes from his deep religious faith, we believe that these are strategies anyone can use. And so we asked him to share them with the readers of HBR.

The Internet of Beefs

You’ve heard me talk about crash-only programming, right? It’s a programming paradigm for critical infrastructure systems, where there is — by design — no graceful way to shut down. A program can only crash and try to recover from a crashed state, which might well be impossible. I came up with a term for the human version: beef-only thinking.

A beef-only thinker is someone you cannot simply talk to. Anything that is not an expression of pure, unqualified support for whatever they are doing or saying is received as a mark of disrespect, and a provocation to conflict. From there, you can only crash into honor-based conflict mode, or back away and disengage.

11 Reasons Not to Become Famous (or “A Few Lessons Learned Since 2007”)

November of 2008. I had more hair, a flip phone, and absolutely no idea what was coming.

Let the cymbals of popularity tinkle still. Let the butterflies of fame glitter with their wings. I shall envy neither their music nor their colors.

— John Adams
Letters of John Adams Addressed to His Wife

“If I’m not famous by 30, I might as well put a bullet in my head.”

The messy, secretive reality behind OpenAI’s bid to save the world

Every year, OpenAI’s employees vote on when they believe artificial general intelligence, or AGI, will finally arrive. It’s mostly seen as a fun way to bond, and their estimates differ widely. But in a field that still debates whether human-like autonomous systems are even possible, half the lab bets it is likely to happen within 15 years.

In the four short years of its existence, OpenAI has become one of the leading AI research labs in the world. It has made a name for itself producing consistently headline-grabbing research, alongside other AI heavyweights like Alphabet’s DeepMind. It is also a darling in Silicon Valley, counting Elon Musk and legendary investor Sam Altman among its founders.