[jacobian.org] I was on The Changelog, and a wild story from Ask A Manager
Hello, Jacob here. Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter.
I was on The Changelog
🎧 I was on The Changelog podcast, talking mostly about my framework for effective work sample tests, and about hiring in general. It was a good time; I appreciated the conversation and the oportunity to talk about this stuff! Listen wherever you get your podcasts, or right here.
My posts
Here's what I published on my blog recently:
📝 That Wild Ask A Manager Story
You may have seen this wild story from Ask A Manager a week ago: the new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed. If not, take a minute to read the story; it’s quite a ride. In short: the company interviewed someone, hired him, but when he showed up for his first day of work … it was a totally different person.
The story made the rounds of all my online social groups, where we mostly just laughed at how bizarre it was. But in one Slack, the conversation continued, and we started taking it seriously, discussing how we’d respond if this happened to us. A friend asked, “if this was your hire, and you manager asked you to change your hiring practices to prevent this, what would you do?”
Nothing. I would do nothing. Here's why.
Elsewhere...
🔗 Managing people 🤯 (Andreas Klinger) — some pretty good high-level advice on management in general. Doesn't get into the weeds on how to accomplish management things, but does have a pretty good framework and set of general rules to try to follow.
One of the favorite parts is this: "your job is not to manage people but to manage processes and lead people". Right on: telling people exactly what to do is usually a sign that something has gone terribly wrong. Instead, you're trying to create the conditions, processes, and structures such that people can do good work.
🔗 Sometimes you have to choose between being right and being effective (non-paywalled link] (Cate Huston) — I had to learn this lesson the hard way: I wanted to be "right" more than I wanted some problem to be solved. Cate writes:
It’s nice to be the person who proposes the solution and fixes the thing, but shifting into the mindset of effectiveness means you let go of needing to be the person who fixes things and instead embrace the role of facilitator who moves things along. If you get the team to agree on the problem and then someone else proposes the solution you had in mind, that is a huge win.
Something Cate doesn't get too much into is how important picking your battles is. An important leadership skill is knowing when to push, and when to let go. There will be situations where you know you're right, but winning the argument will have such negative consequences that it's better to capitulate. I plan on writing about this more soon; stay tuned.