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Authority Issues
Authority Issues episodes
- Episode 50: Alicia Brainerd (Salesforce)
In this episode, Kendall, rachel, and Alicia talk about:
- Germophobia, and being right all along
- Realizing managing humans is more interesting than engineering
- What HR isn't for
- Building experience in the consulting world
- Being reminded that there will be a "next" job
- Choosing stability over passion
- Kendall's lack of patience
- The desire for influence vs cultural and procedural debt
- Leading a community group at work
- Creating space for the team to process the pandemic, a human stand-up
- The effort required to explain how you're doing
- How instead of a drop in productivity, many folks are seeking control by getting things done, connection by working together more closely
- Social and physical meditation
- Negative connotations of authority
- The relief of having someone tell you what to do
- Spending more time cooking, the challenge of constraints on ingredients
- Digital minimalism
You can find Alicia on Twitter as @macapplechick
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
46 min - Episode 49: Leadership during times of crisis? We'll do it live!
In this episode, Kendall and rachel talk about:
- CW: we're probably going to swear more than usual
- The tendency of technical people to try to solve every problem with technology
- rachel's perilous journey home
- Kendall's cabin fever
- The uncertainty of the future, lack of faith in (US) leadership
- Whether it's productive to vent about the above
- Cutting yourself some slack
- Directionality of venting/support structures
- Forecasting vs planning
- Having compassion for your leadership
- Planning for multiple potential futures
- Parallels to the 2000-era dot-com bust
- Random prison pet training detour
- Providing support for emotionally-strapped folk
- How much authoritarianism is appropriate when lives are at stake?
- The role of trust in authority
- Self-soothing techniques from your hosts:
- rachel: cocktails, Dungeons & Dragons, Murdoch Mysteries
- Kendall: Staying in With Emily & Kumail podcast, watching and reading things that happen on beaches, lots of exercise
- Zoom meetings are great until they're not
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
55 min - Episode 48: Cynthia Del'Aria (Raika Technologies)
In this episode, rachel, Kendall, and Cynthia talk about:
- Being 8 years old and writing in VISUAL BASIC! :heart-eyes:
- Taking community college classes with mom at age 12
- Geeking out on things that are older than Kendall :)
- Selling her first company at age 19
- Cleaning up unicorn poop
- What happens after the problem is solved
- Helping companies find their path
- Feeling responsible for the happiness of your employees
- The awkwardness of networking
- Troubleshooting at the product level
- Constantly being in trouble as a kid :)
- What should qualify people to be management
- Discovering higher mathematics and panicking Kendall
- Reading and racecars
You can find Cynthia on LinkedIn, Facebook, and cynthiadelaria.com!
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
54 min - Episode 47: Dan Turkenkopf (Milwaukee Brewers)
In this episode, Kendall, rachel, and talk about:
- Moneyball and the new world of big data and baseball
- How to merge gut feel based on experience with quantitative analysis
- Parlaying an early love of baseball into a paid gig
- The draw of building a team from scratch
- Kendall being incredibly nerdsniped :)
- Starting out as a tech lead
- Putting the R in R&D
- How baseball players respond to data-driven insights
- Baseball engineering org structure
- The particular difficulty of remote leadership
- Adjusting priorities and developing process to compensate for team needs
- Ensuring engineers interact respectfully with non-technical subject matter experts
- Seeing his past self in his employees
- Watching games to validate data models
- Turning his job into a hobby and his hobby into a job
You can find Dan on Twitter at @dturkenk and on LinkedIn :)
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
50 min - Episode 46: Helen Hutchison (League of Women Voters of CA)
In this episode, rachel, Kendall, and Helen talk about:
- Growing up with the League
- The League as an outgrowth of the Suffrage movement
- What counts as non-partisan policy
- The struggle of managing and motivating volunteers
- How fundraising is harder when people are already 'donating' their time
- What an executive director does vs a president in the LWVO
- The tendency to move to fill a vacuum
- Breaking the cycle of doing this important work via the unpaid labor of women
- Developing the organizational habit of offering help and then stepping back to wait for community guidance on what that help looks like
- What to look for in an executive director for the LWV
- Maintaining consistency and project work across many volunteer terms
- The role of local government observers in the League
- What it means to be "somewhat ornery" :)
- Creating the leadership you want to see via tenacity and patience
- The struggle of appreciating some people's volunteerism :)
You can find Helen on LinkedIn and on Twitter as @helenhutch :)
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
49 min - Episode 45: Brianna Connelly (Integrate)
In this episode, Kendall, rachel, and Brianna talk about:
- Feeling the need to 'step in' and handle stuff that isn't getting done (right) ;)
- Making the decision to go to "hair school" and how that helped her communication skills
- rachel's inability to resist the easy joke
- Personal mythology and its pluses and minuses
- Realizing that focus is required to complete a masters degree (!)
- Falling back on high-pressure experience in the salon
- The power of the custom cover letter
- Fast rise to management and the struggle to develop a culture
- The need for early, honest feedback
- Missing....Scala? :) and the power to decide what tools your team uses
- Recommendation for Leeanne Smullen, leadership coach
- Influential nuns in Brianna and Kendall's lives
- How honest communication in one's personal life is different from honest communication at work
You can find Brianna on LinkedIn as Brianna Connelly, and on Instagram as @ghostfaceknitter :)
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
49 min - Episode 44: Corey Quinn (The Duckbill Group)
In this episode, rachel, Kendall, and Corey talk about:
- Humble beginnings as an "angry UNIX sysadmin" (aka the only kind of UNIX sysadmin)
- Vowing to be the opposite of every crappy manager
- Corey's Least Favorite Managers
- Metaphors (for failure)
- Why "We need to talk" sucks
- An example of good leadership in crisis
- Appropriate levels of intensity in the workplace
- What a Cloud Economist does
- How "Last Week in AWS" began (and becoming a #quinnfluencer :))
- Punching up vs punching down, and knowing the difference
- The depressing rareness of people who can take feedback well
- Understanding one's own failure modes, and what twitter is good for
- Choosing not to work at AWS: https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/why-i-turned-down-an-aws-job-offer/
- Intentionally obfuscating one's personal life
- The value of having the priority interrupt of a toddler's demands
- Reconciling one's personal loneliness with a public persona
You can find Corey at https://www.lastweekinaws.com/ and on Twitter as @quinnypig
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
48 min - Episode 43: Beata Puncevic (Healthgrades)
In this episode, Kendall, rachel, and Beata talk about:
- Coming to the US without knowing any English
- Learning to hustle from her parents
- Networking at the mall
- Learning how to manage on the job
- THE BIG PIVOT
- Interviewing for a job with no clear requirements
- Surviving a full-time job and full-time class load simultaneously
- Realizing you're the driver of your own bus
- Discovering that leadership is more than execution alone
- What makes a senior leader vs a junior one
- Developing habits, systems-related thinking, and a recommendation for "Atomic Habits" by James Clear
- Her allergy to the RACI matrix
- An upcoming series on system-level thinking for leadership :)
- Leadership as a partnership, the humbling nature of authority
- Management of puppies and getting them into training school
- The confidence of having leadership experience and its impact on her personal life
You can find Beata Puncevic on LinkedIn :)
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
46 min - Episode 42: Jeremy Bowers (Washington Post)
In this episode, rachel, Kendall, and Jeremy talk about:
- How engineering is a bit different at a newspaper
- A lowly beginning doing tech support at Best Buy
- Saving the day on a project that won a Pulitzer!
- Being glad he's not coding anymore
- What "Newsroom Engineering" means
- Why campaign finance data is critical to the news industry
- Planning a charm offensive
- Tactics for pre-empting burnout when deadlines are immutable
- Book recommendations:
- Camille Fournier: The Manager's Path
- Will Larson: An Elegant Puzzle
- Donella H. Meadows: Thinking In Systems
- The actual net effect of indulging a "brilliant asshole"
- Pushing for more remote workers
- How to push back against authority when needed
- Cooking at scale and for one's coworkers
You can find Jeremy on Twitter at @jeremybowers
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
44 min - Episode 41: Authority Issues 2019 Year-End Bonanza!
In this special year-end episode, rachel and Kendall talk about:
- How much we amuse each other
- The vagaries of podcast recording technology
- Trains. Kind of a lot. I'm sorry :)
- Work-life balance over the holidays
- Management styles and customizations, a recurring theme
- Tactics for feeling more comfortable with authority
- What "changing the world for the better" can mean
- How many times we've actually met in person (spoiler, it's twice)
- What we value about doing this show
- Goals for the coming year
As we mentioned, we would love for you to send us your guest recommendations/intros, tag us on twitter: @djpiebob and @blatanterror
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
35 min
About Authority Issues
From the publisher's feed
Welcome to Authority Issues, a podcast about leadership, management, and competitive prescription writing.
Hosted by Rachel Perkins (aka piebob), and Kendall Miller