The Manager - Edition 57 - Widen Your Awareness - By Rob Lambert

Welcome to the Cultivated Management Newsletter

Hi.

I hope you’ve had a cracking weekend and are looking forward to the week ahead.

I start a new gig this week and am very excited about it. 

Whenever you start a new role or at a new company it’s important to widen your awareness as quickly as possible.

When you’re new to a workplace, you don’t have the facts, insights and relationships to be effective. So, you need to widen your awareness and become company smart.

This means learning about the mission and vision and getting behind it. It means understanding the values and aligning to them. It means working out whose useful, kind and helpful and who isn’t.

It’s also about finding out where work comes from and where it goes to. It’s about building relationships at the boundaries of this work.

You're trying to learn as much as you can about the business and how it operates as quickly as possible. Along the way you're trying to build relationships and work out what success looks like.

This is done by reading the company intranet/docs, communicating with others, asking questions and of course, observing and studying the world around you.

It's impossible to be effective without knowledge and relationships. Knowledge is gained by studying. Relationships are built by communication.

And once you widen your awareness you will be surprised less often.

Until next time
Rob

My week in pictures

It's snowing here in the UK which is brilliant fun with the kids, but not so much fun when driving to work. We can't cope with the snow here in the UK.

Here's Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth. Took the boys around the Historic Dockyards and harbour tour. Very good.

Cool Stuff To Click On

1 - We often build these super cool things, like electric scooters, but we don't always know what the impact can be. The anatomy of an electric scooter crash.

2 - Interesting post on what to do before a tricky or difficult conversation.

3 - It may seem like I don't like Facebook, as it turns out - that is true, but I'm just intrigued as to why so many talented engineers and techies work for a company with such dubious goings on. Do you think people are aware of it when they're coding and testing it?

4 - Loved this - meet the man behind the majority of content on wikipedia. 

5 - Getting software correct can be tricky - as Apple prove this week with a howler of a bug in Facetime. It reminded me of a bug I once found in some call centre software, when I pretended to be an agent who really wanted to get out of taking the next call coming in. Found some brilliant loop holes. 

6 - A Downside to Rock Star Employees.

7 - I suffer great overwhelm sometimes. I take on too much and I get confused between reacting and focusing on the stuff I really need to get done. Good post on how to see it for what it is - too many demands on your time.

8 - Research shows that long hours is not good for employees or the company. I've been telling managers and leaders this for years :)

9 - I don't eat breakfast (unless I've done a particularly tough workout) and some science is suggesting that breakfast isn't always something we all need. 

10 - I record a regular podcast on Software Testing with my good friend Joel - grab it here. 

Book Of The Week

This week's book of the week is a fun little book, essentially about how the Japanese live to be so old because they have found their purpose in life. It called Ikigai : The Japanese secret to a long and happy life

If you read around philosophy, health and wellbeing then you've likely heard about many of the stories coming from Japan (and other Blue Zones) that explain why they live to be so old. 

It's not just that they live to be so old, but they are so active in their old age too!

The book is quite short and easy to read, and it breaks down the plan in to digestible sections. The stories are inspiring and easy to associate with and the explanations are quite clear. It all comes down to eating well, finding your passion in life, enjoying life with people you care about (and care about you) and not worrying too much. Sounds easy, right?

It's a fun little read. I enjoyed this one. 

Ikigai : The Japanese secret to a long and happy life
 

Thanks for reading this week's edition of The Manager. 

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Thanks
Rob..