Inherited Composition

This is the second part of the improve internal communication and collaboration episode. Before listening to this episode, please check out the episode we published the week before.

If your company is going through exponential growth and doubling size every year, creating and keeping alignment across the growing organization becomes really hard.

In this 2 part episode we’ll discuss different strategies and tactics that both Wolox and Auth0 implemented to improve internal communications and cross team collaboration.

We’ll first talk about how to create alignment across the organization between your different departments. We’ll focus on OKRs, creating a global list of projects and processes, fostering empathy between departments and sharing point of contacts.

We’ll then dive into the 2 different types of content your organization creates: ephemeral content which is needed to drive discussions and reach to conclusions and lasting contents where you save the decisions and things your team needs to understand as it grows.

Lastly, we’re going to discuss which is the right meeting cadence that’s needed to drive effective cross department collaboration.

We hope you really enjoy the show :).

If your company is going through exponential growth and doubling size every year, creating and keeping alignment across the growing organization becomes really hard.

In this 2 part episode we’ll discuss different strategies and tactics that both Wolox and Auth0 implemented to improve internal communications and cross team collaboration.

We’ll first talk about how to create alignment across the organization between your different departments. We’ll focus on OKRs, creating a global list of projects and processes, fostering empathy between departments and sharing point of contacts.

We’ll then dive into the 2 different types of content your organization creates: ephemeral content which is needed to drive discussions and reach to conclusions and lasting contents where you save the decisions and things your team needs to understand as it grows.

Lastly, we’re going to discuss which is the right meeting cadence that’s needed to drive effective cross department collaboration.

We hope you really enjoy the show :).

The most important asset of any company is its people. A company can’t perform well if the people that work there aren’t happy and productive.

In this episode, we’ll learn how to better work with your direct reports to make sure they’re happy, focused and productive.

We’ll first talk about 1:1s. We’ll discuss how they should be structured, how often you should do them and why they’re one of the most important things you MUST do with your direct reports.

We’ll then talk about Performance Reviews. We’ll discuss about how to use 1:1s to do better performance reviews as well as what format we use and why.

After that, we’re going to discuss individual weekly syncups with your direct reports. We’ll discuss how they’re structured and how to make them really useful.

Last but not least, we’ll see how to create productive and useful staff meetings, those meetings in which you meet with all of your direct reports at the same time.

In this episode we’ll talk about what transparency is, and how you can apply it in a succesful way in your organization. We’re going to share some of the pitfalls we’ve both had as we implemented it with some solutions.

Key Learnings

In the first section we’ll talk about why and how you need to educate people before being transparent.

In the second section we’ll talk about what are some of the advantages of being transparent.

In the third section we’re going to explain some misconceptions organizations have about transparency.

We hope you really enjoy the how :)

In this episode we’ll be talking about how to improve the interactions between the design/ux org and the rest of the organization. We’ll be sharing different problems that came up as Auth0 and Wolox scaled and solutions that were implemented.

Key Learnings:

We’ll first start with a sum up of the genesis and evolution of the design/ux org in Wolox and Auth0.

One of the first problems that both companies experienced was about focus. When you have small design team, should they focus on Product or Marketing?

Sometimes, designers have 2 bosses: their head of design and the lead of the team that they belonged to. The head of design gives the designer one task, and the lead of the team gives them another. Which one should they take? In the second section, we’ll learn how to deal with this problem.

At both Auth0 and Wolox, at some point in time, design was a bottleneck for shipping some projects. In the third section, we’ll learn how to tackle that issue.

In the fourth section, we’ll learn how to move design from being “order takers” to being included earlier in the creation process.

In the fifth and last section, we’ll discuss whether it’s better to have a centralized design team or have design resources spread across the organization.

Learn more about this episode from our website: https://inheritedcomposition.com/episodes/2018/5/11/working-with-ux-from-good-or-bad-to-great

Learn m

In this episode, we’re going to talk about how learning evolves throughout the years. At first, when you’re a junior marketer/developer, you’re like a sponge trying to learn every new shiny things. But is that good for your whole career? Does that change? How? In this episode, we’re going to try to answer those questions!

We’ll first talk about hypes. At first, we always want to learn the latest hype and use it. What happens when you want to use that hype in “production”? How much time and effort was put into that hype? Is it something short without much research? Is it proven?

Secondly, we’re going to talk about clickbait titles. The web is now flooded of posts like “The 5 things you need to know for SEO” or “The 3 most popular techniques to call an API”. Is it worth to continue reading them? How can we choose wisely?

We’re in the era of Information, or as Homo Deus calls it, we’re becoming Dataists. In the third section, we’re going to discuss about how to differentiate information from noise and some techniques to do so.

Finally, we’re going to close with a sum up of all of the sections above giving a guide on when it’s good to learn?

Learn more about this episode from our website: https://inheritedcomposition.com/episodes/2018/2/26/wip-from-ic-to-mgmt-8r58x

We’ve separated this episode into 4 sections. In each of them we’ll be explaining different issues that might arise when you move from being an individual contributor (IC) to both a manager as well as a manager of managers. In each section, Guido and Gonto will be sharing some of the solutions they’ve found that worked for them, as well as some examples of both good habits as well as fuck ups.

Key Learnings:

* When you’re an IC, you have full control of (mostly) everything you do. When you’re a manager, that’s no longer true. In the first section, we’ll talk about a few solutions for this.

* When you’re an IC, you’re the one who ships stuff. When you move to be a manager, your job is to enable people to ship and execute better. In the second section, we’ll share some insights about how to better do this transition

* For a company to succeed, you need to both hire people smarter than you as well as hiring for your weaknesses. In the third section, we’ll discuss how to handle this.

* Being a manager of ICs is very different from being a manager of managers. Last but not least, we’ll discuss how to do this transition effectively. SPOILER ALERT: we’re still learning this :D

Bibliography:

Posts:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdMvWLARF1w

* http://tomtunguz.com/ownership/

* https://qz.com/1058563/these-are-googles-tools-for-effective-management/

* http://firstround.com/review/to-grow-faster-hit-pause-and-ask-these-questions-from-stripes-coo/

* https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum/

* https://m.signalvnoise.com/

* https://hbr.org/2012/07/why-arent-you-delegating

* https://medium.com/@mrabkin/the-art-of-the-awkward-1-1-f4e1dcbd1c5c

* http://randsinrepose.com/links/2017/01/05/regardless-of-seniority-every-good-manager-will/

* https://blog.knowyourcompany.com/

Books:

* [The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XP3GJ7F/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I2CS5PNWF5VBSV&colid=25FP9VGBF88KM)

* [The Alliance](https://www.amazon.com/Alliance-Managing-Talent-Networked-Age/dp/1625275773)

Podcasts:

* [Manager Tools](https://www.manager-tools.com/all-podcasts)

* [Simple Leadership](http://simpleleadership.io/)

Learn more about this episode in our website: https://inheritedcomposition.com/episodes/2018/2/26/wip-from-ic-to-mgmt

This episode is all about scaling a company. We’ll learn about the experiences of Auth0, which went from 0 to 300 employees in 4.5 years and Wolox, which went from 0 to 180 in 6 years.

* We’ll start talking about different strategies and tactics that can be used to keep and enforce the culture and core values.

* We’ll move to talk about on boarding of new employees and how key that is to scaling.

* We’ll then talk about how processes don’t suck as much as we sometimes think and share a few tips on how to start defining them.

* Finally we’ll talk about how to correctly pick and continuously improve the metrics and KPIs that matter and how they can help with scaling execution.

Learn more about this episode: https://inheritedcomposition.com/episodes/2018/2/8/scaling-up-how-growth-impacts-cultures-and-processes

Who are Guido and Gonto? What is this podcast about? Inherited Composition … WTF?

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