## SSLD Strategies and Skills Learning and Development SSLD uses N3C: needs circumstances characteristics capacity it defines problems and challenges in life in terms of human needs before anything else, we have to ask: why do people even have relationships in the first place? - we have relationships based on needs, which come in 4 different levels Physical Food Water Shelter Safety All things we experienced as infants Psychological/Interpersonal Security Attachment Affiliation Intimacy Social Sense of Identity Social Position Status Access to resources and opportunities in our social world Existential/Spiritual Purpose Sense of Being Union with the universe we ask "what are my needs?", but not everyone understands their needs very clearly we often have wants that are confused as needs Needs can be intrinsic or extrinsic Intrinsic - we value the relationship for its own sake Affiliation Attachment Intimacy Extrinsic - we have a secondary purpose for the relationship Personal Instrumental feedback from relationships heavily impact who we are SSLD uses strategies and skills strategies are sequences of actions aimed at achieving a particular goal skills are something you can do well to achieve a particular task it is basically a "post-professional era" tool, meant to draw from more than one specialization to achieve goals it breaks into a method 1. identifies the problem translation problems come from unmet needs, which can be met with better goals 2. taking action through SSLD adds SSLD to help with the goals 3. beyond problem solving # articles ## a planning and scheduling [Employee Scheduling | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22582444) [Employee Scheduling | OR-Tools | Google for Developers](https://developers.google.com/optimization/scheduling/employee_scheduling) [Why are you so busy? | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32644277) [Tom Lingham (Toml)](https://tomlingham.com/articles/why-are-you-so-busy/) [More Employees Want a 9-to-5 Schedule Than Leaders Think](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/510656/employees-schedule-leaders-think.aspx) [Steve McConnell](http://stevemcconnell.com/articles/how-to-defend-an-unpopular-schedule/) (1996) How to Defend an Unpopular Schedule [Alice Goldfuss](https://sysadvent.blogspot.be/2016/12/day-6-no-more-on-call-martyrs.html) (2016) No More On-Call Martyrs [Jennifer Riggins](https://thenewstack.io/call-rotations-best-wake-devs-middle-night) (2018) On Call Rotations: How Best to Wake Devs Up in the Middle of the Night ## b tracking progress - customer opinion [The Ugly Truth About Net Promoter Score Surveys](https://growth.design/case-studies/nps-surveys) NPS (Net Promoter Score) questions are dubious ways to get feedback - The "Rate on a scale" method is NOT a good measurement because people often treat the survey requests as spam, and they're easy to "game[game theory]" (Goodhart's Law) - Incentivizing people doesn't work either, since it leans toward demographics who have lots of time on their hands (and, often, not much money) - The best way to do it is with focus groups and dialogues with people DIRECTLY experienced with the product, and with no reason to answer one way or another (e.g., free food either way), and it MUST be anonymized to make that happen - But, if you must have it in text form: 1. Keep the subject matter concise and to-the-point 2. Use a human-voiced, short introduction 3. Have a low-commitment "ask" (e.g., 10 seconds) 4. Keep VERY few options for the person (e.g., Bad, Okay, Good) 1. Specify an entirely optional click-through for extra information, if they want to give it 5. End by specifying clearly why you want the information as well as the level of confidentiality of the information [Why I'm done with Mouser Electronics | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35892246) [Why I'm done with Mouser Electronics - lcamtuf's thing](https://web.archive.org/web/20230511003235/https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/why-im-done-with-mouser-electronics) - OFTEN, A CUSTOMER WHO SPEAKS UP IS 1 OF 500, AND IT SHOULD BE A MAJOR ALARM TO YOU ## b tracking progress - emergencies [How one ED mobilized his department during a mass casualty incident (2017) | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41247841) [How One Las Vegas ED Saved Hundreds of Lives After the Worst Mass Shooting in U.S. History | Emergency Physicians Monthly](https://epmonthly.com/article/not-heroes-wear-capes-one-las-vegas-ed-saved-hundreds-lives-worst-mass-shooting-u-s-history/) ## b tracking progress [Your Company's Bossware Could Get You in Legal Trouble](https://www.kolide.com/blog/your-company-s-bossware-could-get-you-in-legal-trouble) [Managers, stop distracting employees | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35400760) [Managers, Stop Distracting Your Employees](https://hbr.org/2023/01/managers-stop-distracting-your-employees) [A good measurement culture where numbers don't replace common sense | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37220667) [How to avoid KPI psychosis in your organization? | by Ágoston Török | Promaton](https://blog.promaton.com/how-to-avoid-kpi-psychosis-in-your-organization-5ffc83967f2b) [People don't work as much as they say | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30123096) [People don't work as much as you think](https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/people-dont-work-as-much-as-you-think) [Capability Maturity Model Integration - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model_Integration) [Ted Dziuba](http://widgetsandshit.com/teddziuba/2011/12/process.html) (2011) Who Needs Process? > Get rid of your prioritized list of tasks. Stop having your daily stand-ups. No more status report e-mails. Just stop doing that stuff, and get rid of anyone who can't cope. Nothing terrible will happen. ## management methodologies - agile [Ask HN: Do you think Agile/Scrum is beneficial for software delivery? | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26345235) [Less is more agile | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32706548) [Less is more agile | Tales about Software Engineering](https://beny23.github.io/posts/my_take_on_engineering_room_9/) [Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27946382) [Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion - Simple Thread](https://www.simplethread.com/agile-at-20-the-failed-rebellion/) [The age of cargo cult Agile must end | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34886374) [The age of cargo cult Agile must end. | by Jason Yip | Medium](https://jchyip.medium.com/the-age-of-cargo-cult-agile-must-end-9408e1d13e1d) [Gregg Caines](http://caines.ca/blog/2011/09/14/yoagile-the-good-parts/) (2011) Agile: The Good Parts [Jerome Kehrli](https://www.niceideas.ch/roller2/badtrash/entry/periodic-table-of-agile-principles) (2017) Periodic Table of Agile Principles and Practices [Catherine Louis](https://opensource.com/article/18/3/tips-better-agile-retrospective-meetings) (2018) 8 tips for better agile retrospective meetings [Retromap](https://retromat.org) Inspiration & plans for (agile) retrospectives : Planning your next agile retrospective? Start with a random plan, change it to fit the team's situation, print it and share the URL. Or browse around for new ideas! [Ben Putano](https://stackify.com/deployment-best-practices) (2018) 8 Best Practices for Agile Software Deployment [Manifesto for Half-Arsed Agile Software Development](https://www.halfarsedagilemanifesto.org/) "We have heard about new ways of developing software by paying consultants and reading Gartner reports...." [Joshua Kerievsky](https://www.industriallogic.com/blog/evolutionary-design/) (2015) Evolutionary Design agile's most valuable practice? [Mike Cottmeyer](https://www.leadingagile.com/2008/04/one-team/) (2008) One Team [Ronald Jeffries](https://www.ronjeffries.com/articles/018-01ff/abandon-1/) (2018) Developers Should Abandon Agile [Async Manifesto](http://asyncmanifesto.org/) (2014) Manifesto for Async Software Development Principles of Async Software Development [Joshua Kerievsky](https://www.industriallogic.com/blog/redefining-done/) (2010) Redefining Done > "A user story is done when the code is fully integrated, all tests pass and the functionality meets the expectations of the story author(s)." > The race to get work done, especially to show management that we got work done is far less important than focusing on creating happy, productive users. > A story isn't done until it is being used by real users in production and has been validated to be a useful part of a product. [The GROWS Method® Institute](https://growsmethod.com/) What is GROWS? [Slicing your development work as a multi-layer cake | Thoughtworks](https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/slicing-your-development-work-multi-layer-cake) ## management methodologies [Bill Wake](https://www.industriallogic.com/blog/evolution-cupcakes-and-skeletons/) (2016) Evolution, Cupcakes, and Skeletons: Changing Design ## management methodologies - scrum [How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28669514) [How Big Tech Runs Tech Projects and the Curious Absence of Scrum](https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/project-management-in-tech) [You don't need Scrum, you just need to do Kanban right (2022) | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35857463) [You don't need Scrum. You just need to do Kanban right.](https://lucasfcosta.com/2022/10/02/scrum-versus-kanban.html) [Christiaan Verwijs](https://blog.agilistic.nl/7-powerful-ways-to-get-feedback-from-users-in-scrum/) 7 Powerful Ways To Get Feedback From Users (In Scrum) [Gregg Caines](http://caines.ca/blog/2014/12/02/i-dont-miss-the-sprint/) (2014) I Don't Miss the Sprint about team productivity in Scrum ## managing design and ux [How To Take Charge Of A UX Kickoff Meeting - Smashing Magazine](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/04/how-to-take-charge-of-a-ux-kickoff-meeting/) [How we approach 1:1s with the technical team at Playground Inc. and how you can too](https://medium.com/playgroundinc/how-we-approach-1-1s-with-the-technical-team-at-playground-inc-and-how-you-can-too-6de7b7f4ed4a) [Staff Design](https://staff.design/) collection of interview with designers exploring how product designers navigate the individual contributor (IC) path to its highest levels ## product prioritization [20 Product Prioritization Techniques: A Map and Guided Tour | Folding Burritos](https://foldingburritos.com/blog/product-prioritization-techniques/) # guides ## b tracking progress [Science is a strong-link problem - by Adam Mastroianni](https://www.experimental-history.com/p/science-is-a-strong-link-problem) [Contract lifecycle management - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_lifecycle_management) ## c thinking ahead [System dynamics - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics) [Confidence determines speed vs. quality | Untools](https://untools.co/confidence-determines-speed-vs-quality) [Systems thinking | Untools](https://untools.co/systems-thinking/#tools) [Decision making | Untools](https://untools.co/decision-making/#tools) [Problem solving | Untools](https://untools.co/problem-solving/#tools) [Communication | Untools](https://untools.co/communication/#tools) ## employee turnover [Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to software companies | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34328069) [Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to software companies - Baldur Bjarnason](https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2022/theory-building/) ## making improvements [What is Deming Cycle - Definitions & Examples - EdrawMax](https://www.edrawsoft.com/business-diagram/deming-cycle.html) ## management methodologies - agile [Agile Software Development Handbook - Scrum, Kanban, and Other Methodologies Explained](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/agile-software-development-handbook/) [Better Architecture Diagrams for Agile Teams: actionable tips and lessons. | by Sébastien Portebois | Medium](https://sportebois.medium.com/better-architecture-diagrams-for-agile-teams-actionable-tips-and-lessons-e76627dc4315) [GitHub - lorabv/awesome-agile: Awesome List of resources on Agile Software Development.](https://github.com/lorabv/awesome-agile) [jdumars/agileops](https://github.com/jdumars/agileops) The Agile Operations methodology ## management methodologies - holacracy [Holacracy](https://www.holacracy.org) ## management methodologies [12 Project Management Methodologies: Your Guide | Coursera](https://www.coursera.org/articles/project-management-methodologies-your-guide) [12 Project Management Methodologies: Your Guide | Coursera](https://www.coursera.org/gb/articles/project-management-methodologies-your-guide) [Project Management Methodologies: 12 Best Frameworks [2022] • Asana](https://asana.com/resources/project-management-methodologies) [Project Management Methodologies - Everything You Need To Know](https://www.teamwork.com/project-management-guide/project-management-methodologies) [9 Of The Most Popular Project Management Methodologies Made Simple](https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/projects/pm-methodology/project-management-methodologies-made-simple) [10 Project Management Methodologies To Implement | ClearPoint Strategy](https://www.clearpointstrategy.com/blog/project-management-methodologies) [Wardley map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardley_map) (2015) An introduction to Wardley 'Value Chain' Mapping. [adminzen.org - The Admin Zen](https://adminzen.org/?) ## management methodologies - scrum [Learn scrum with Jira Software | Atlassian](https://www.atlassian.com/agile/tutorials/how-to-do-scrum-with-jira-software) ## management methodologies - waterfall [Waterfall Methodology: The Ultimate Guide to the Waterfall Model](https://www.projectmanager.com/guides/waterfall-methodology) ## metrics [The worst programmer I know | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37361947) [The Worst Programmer I Know - Dan North & Associates Limited](https://dannorth.net/the-worst-programmer/) # text ## alliance of stupidity make sure the dumb decisions don't reproduce - it's easy enough for employees to stay on track by themselves, but multiple dumb decisions compound when people are in groups - if someone has a tendency to do dumb things, keep that person around someone qualified and authoritative on the subject ## a planning and scheduling How does one schedule an event where the Japanese will turn up 10 minutes early, the Germans and the Swiss on time, the Americans and British a bit late, the French after them and the Brazilians arriving an hour after the party was due to end? - very lenient timetables is a REALLY good idea, proportionally to the variance of the [cultures] in the team Once all the threats have been surfaced, the project team can Prepare to Be Wrong by adapting its plans to forestall as many of the negative scenarios as possible. The project management triangle: - Good + Cheap + Fast, pick 2 of them - However, in the absence of speed being a factor (e.g., [insurance], [computers]), then [safety] is in lieu of fast - e.g., you want good, cheap insurance? make sure you're not living unsafely - e.g., you want a cybersecure software that's free? don't expect it to have lots of features or be [user-friendly] A boss moves a problematic person into the midst of a stellar team, hoping to improve him by example. What happens? The entire team degenerates. Place a delinquent teen among comparatively civilized peers. The delinquency spreads, not the stability. Down is a lot easier than up. Vacation policy employed by Netflix, the streaming video and DVD-by-mail company based in Silicon Valley, is audaciously simple and simply audacious. Salaried employees can take as much time off as they'd like, whenever they want to take it. Nobody - not employees themselves, not managers - tracks vacation days. In other words, Netflix's holiday policy is to have no policy at all. Since Netflix wasn't tracking how many hours people were logging each work day, these employees wondered, why should it track how many holidays people were taking each work year? Any time someone starts a sentence with "All you need to do is…" or "Just do this…," the odds are they are wrong. Rate yourself. Where do you see yourself in the Dreyfus model for the primary skills you use at work? List the ways your current skill level impacts you. Identify other skills where you are a novice, advanced beginner, and so on. Be aware of the possibility of second-order incompetence when making these evaluations. For each of these skills, decide what you need to advance to the next level. Keep these examples in mind as you read the remainder of this book. Think back to problems you've experienced on a project team. Could any of them have been avoided if the team had been aware of the Dreyfus model? What can you do differently going forward? Positive emotions are essential to learning and creative thinking. Being "happy" broadens your thought processes and brings more of the brain's hardware online. "To make time for" is a bit of a misnomer; time can't be created or destroyed. Time can only be allocated. ## a planning and scheduling - sivers - The Art of Project Management - Scott Berkun ### SCHEDULES Schedules serve 3 functions : allow for commitments to be made, for people to see their work as a contribution to the whole, tracking of progress. Schedules give the team a tool to track progress and to break work into manageable chunks. Big schedules should be divided into small schedules to minimize risks, increase frequency of adjustments. Breaking things down into one-or-two day sizes helps people understand what the work is that they need to do. A good schedule gives a clearer view of the project, flushes out challenges and oversights, and makes it more likely that good things will happen. For ANY project, break the available time into three equal parts: (1) DESIGN, (2) IMPLEMENTATION, (3) TESTING. The zero-sum nature of projects surfaces : adding new features requires more than just a programmer implementing them, there are unavoidable design and testing costs that someone has to pay. The earlier estimates are made, the less accurate they are, but rough estimates are the only way to make a starting point for better ones. When schedules slip, there were hidden or ignored costs that were never accounted for. Schedules should be made with skepticism. Create detailed schedules for limited periods of time only. A schedule doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough for the team and leaders to believe in, provide a basis for tracking and making adjustments, and have a probability of success that satisfies the client. If leaders acknowledge weak estimates in the schedule, and are comfortable with greater schedule risk, there's nothing wrong with weak estimates. On smaller, faster projects, rough estimates may be enough. Good estimates are everyone's business, and it should be the work of the entire team. Lack of clarity on higher-level objectives has a direct influence on the low-level assumptions programmers make. QUESTIONS THAT HELP CATCH SCHEDULE PROBLEMS: * Were sick days, holidays and vacation time for all contributors included? * Do individuals have access to the schedule, and asked to report regular progress? * Is someone watching overall schedule on daily/weekly basis? * Does the team feel ownership and commitment to the schedule? (If not, did they contribute?) * Do leaders add more feature requests than they help eliminate? Do leaders say "no" to new work and provide a philosophy to the team for how to respond to new (late) requests? * Are people on the team encouraged to say "no" to new work requests that don't fit the goals and vision? * Are there moments in the schedule when adjustments and renegotiations can take place by leaders? * Are specs and design plans good enough for engineering to make good work estimates? * Is engineering trained in making good work estimates? ## b tracking progress [What "work" looks like | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33326080) [What "Work" Looks Like - Jim Nielsen's Blog](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/what-work-looks-like/) - creativity is best WITHOUT collaboration [Physical buttons outperform touchscreens in new cars, test finds | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32494497) [Physical buttons outperform touchscreens in new cars, test finds | Vi Bilägare](https://www.vibilagare.se/english/physical-buttons-outperform-touchscreens-new-cars-test-finds) - indicate the "long poles" (from comments) and how that can affect project lifecycles When you say to someone "What do you need?" you're giving them a homework assignment - to figure out what they need help with. When we reach a midpoint between a known start and finish, a mental siren alerts us that we've squandered half of our time. That injects a healthy dose of stress - Uh-oh, we're running out of time! - that revives our motivation and reshapes our strategy. Teams made their most significant progress during a concentrated midpoint burst. Rules and policies and regulations and stipulations are innovation killers. People do their best work when they're unencumbered. How to detect a lousy management chart - 1 the numbers can be removed and the information represents itself the same - percentages that don't add up to 100% - no source data to reference (such as a reporting agency - 2 jargon-heavy - this may even have the reductionism present in most good UX cases - the information is opaque enough for the manager to "broadly interpret" it - 3 thoroughly jargon-dense explanations precluding AND concluding the dataset - little to no numerical indicators or added understanding inside the body text You want thinking, responsible developers. Overreliance on formal models will tend to reward herd behavior and devalue individual creativity. By targeting your methodology to novices, you will create a poor working environment for the experienced team members, Novices need quick successes and context-free rules. You can't expect them to be able to handle novel situations on their own. Given a problem space, they'll stop to consider everything, whether it's relevant or not. Don't confuse them unnecessarily with the big picture. Experts need to have access to the big picture; don't cripple them with restrictive, bureaucratic rules that aim to replace judgment. You want the benefit of their expert judgment. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-boxed. For any goal you have in mind (losing weight, deposing your boss, conquering the world, and so on), you need to have a plan: a series of objectives that will help get to your goal. Each objective should have the SMART characteristics. Measurable goes hand-in-hand with being specific. It's hard to measure something general and abstract but much easier to measure something concrete and specific - using actual numbers. If you think you can't measure your objective, then it's probably not specific enough. ## b tracking progress - Matt Levine ### Wells Fargo! In 2016, Wells Fargo & Co. got in trouble for [opening fake accounts](https://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/click/35707099.284777/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmxvb21iZXJnLmNvbS9vcGluaW9uL2FydGljbGVzLzIwMTYtMDktMDkvd2VsbHMtZmFyZ28tb3BlbmVkLWEtY291cGxlLW1pbGxpb24tZmFrZS1hY2NvdW50cz9jbXBpZD1CQkQwNjEzMjRfTU9ORVlTVFVGRiZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtPWVtYWlsJnV0bV9zb3VyY2U9bmV3c2xldHRlciZ1dG1fdGVybT0yNDA2MTMmdXRtX2NhbXBhaWduPW1vbmV5c3R1ZmY/60e87ce39a995a4b1a2deb96Be65154cb). What happened was that Wells Fargo’s senior management had decided that it wanted its branch employees to cross-sell products, to push each checking customer to open up a savings account and a credit card and sign up for online banking and maybe get a mortgage, because this would deepen the bank’s relationship with the customer and ultimately lead to more revenue. But instead of hiring and training employees who would holistically assess each customer’s needs and suggest suitable products, Wells Fargo had “strict quotas regulating the number of daily ‘solutions’ that its bankers must reach,” and its managers would “constantly hound, berate, demean and threaten employees to meet these unreachable quotas.” And so the employees, rather than working with each customer to build a suite of products that met the customer’s needs and deepened her relationship with the bank, would just go and open a bunch of fake accounts. They’d sign the customer up for online banking and a credit card and a savings account _without her knowledge_, because then they could check off their quotas and move on. This was bad. Wells Fargo paid a lot of fines and went through a lot of public rending of garments. The problem, it seemed to me, was that Wells Fargo — a giant company with thousands of employees — was stuck managing its employees by crude metrics (how many “solutions” they opened) rather than with a nuanced understanding of the business and their contributions to it. I [wrote at the time](https://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/click/35707099.284777/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmxvb21iZXJnLmNvbS9vcGluaW9uL2FydGljbGVzLzIwMTYtMDktMDkvd2VsbHMtZmFyZ28tb3BlbmVkLWEtY291cGxlLW1pbGxpb24tZmFrZS1hY2NvdW50cz9jbXBpZD1CQkQwNjEzMjRfTU9ORVlTVFVGRiZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtPWVtYWlsJnV0bV9zb3VyY2U9bmV3c2xldHRlciZ1dG1fdGVybT0yNDA2MTMmdXRtX2NhbXBhaWduPW1vbmV5c3R1ZmY/60e87ce39a995a4b1a2deb96Ce65154cb): > Two basic principles of management, and regulation, and life, are: > > 1. You get what you measure. > 2. The thing that you measure will get gamed. > > Really that's just one principle: You get what you measure, but _only exactly_ what you measure. There's no guarantee that you'll get the more general good thing that you thought you were approximately measuring. If you want hard workers and measure hours worked, you’ll get a lot of workers surfing the internet until midnight. You want a lot of products opened, you get a lot of products opened, but in a bad way. It’s a case of [Goodhart’s law](https://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/click/35707099.284777/aHR0cHM6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnL3dpa2kvR29vZGhhcnQlMjdzX2xhdw/60e87ce39a995a4b1a2deb96Bb919ca13): “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Wells Fargo is the absolute poster child for Goodhart’s law. [[5]](imap://dave%40stucky%2Etech@mail.stucky.tech:993/fetch%3EUID%3E.INBOX%3E6335#footnote-5)  Here is [the dumbest possible version](https://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/click/35707099.284777/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmxvb21iZXJnLmNvbS9uZXdzL2FydGljbGVzLzIwMjQtMDYtMTMvd2VsbHMtZmlyZXMtb3Zlci1hLWRvemVuLWZvci1zaW11bGF0aW9uLW9mLWtleWJvYXJkLWFjdGl2aXR5P2NtcGlkPUJCRDA2MTMyNF9NT05FWVNUVUZGJnV0bV9tZWRpdW09ZW1haWwmdXRtX3NvdXJjZT1uZXdzbGV0dGVyJnV0bV90ZXJtPTI0MDYxMyZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249bW9uZXlzdHVmZg/60e87ce39a995a4b1a2deb96B53fe84c3): > Wells Fargo & Co. fired more than a dozen employees last month after investigating claims that they were faking work. > > The staffers, all in the firm’s wealth- and investment-management unit, were “discharged after review of allegations involving simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work,” according to disclosures filed with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. > > “Wells Fargo holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behavior,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. > > Devices and software to imitate employee activity, sometimes known as “mouse movers” or “mouse jigglers,” took off during the pandemic-spurred work-from-home era, with people swapping tips for using them on social-media sites Reddit and TikTok. Such gadgets are available on Amazon.com for less than $20. Ahahaha come on. You want a lot of mouse movement, you get a lot of mouse movement, but in a bad way. Imagine deciding how to measure and manage the productivity and value added of your wealth and investment management employees while they are working from home. What might you measure? 1. These people manage portfolios. You could measure their investment return, or return against a benchmark, or their alpha after adjusting for various market, sector and style factors. You could measure how many assets they attract and retain, or how much they generate in fees. 2. These people deal with clients. You could measure how many clients they bring in, or how many client assets. You could survey the clients and grade the employees based on customer satisfaction. You could even, crudely, have some metric like “call three clients every day,” and make sure they do that. 3. These people sit at computers. You could _monitor their computers to make sure that they’re moving the mouse at least once every five minutes for eight hours a day_. Which of those do you think is the best proxy for, like, contributions to Wells Fargo’s return on equity? Which is the simplest to measure? Which is the simplest to game? [5] There’s also the [fake dinner receipt scandal of 2018](https://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/click/35707099.284777/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmxvb21iZXJnLmNvbS92aWV3L2FydGljbGVzLzIwMTgtMDktMDQvd2VsbHMtZmFyZ28taGFkLWEtZmFrZS1kaW5uZXItcmVjZWlwdC1zY2FuZGFsP2NtcGlkPUJCRDA2MTMyNF9NT05FWVNUVUZGJnV0bV9tZWRpdW09ZW1haWwmdXRtX3NvdXJjZT1uZXdzbGV0dGVyJnV0bV90ZXJtPTI0MDYxMyZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249bW9uZXlzdHVmZg/60e87ce39a995a4b1a2deb96Bc55f1b6d). ## construction schedule A line-by-line, day-by-day listing of every building task that needed to be accomplished, in what order, and when. The whole checklist is sent to the subcontractors and other independent experts so they can double-check that everything is correct, that nothing has been missed. What results is remarkable: a succession of day-by-day checks that guide how the building is constructed and ensure that the knowledge of hundreds, perhaps thousands, is put to use in the right place at the right time in the right way. Submittal schedule specified communication tasks. Managers dealt with the unexpected and the uncertain by making sure the experts spoke to one another - on X date regarding Y process. The experts could make their individual judgments, but they had to do so as part of a team that took one another's concerns into account, discussed unplanned developments, and agreed on the way forward. While no one could anticipate all the problems, they could foresee where and when they might occur. The checklist therefore detailed who had to talk to whom, by which date, and about what. ## c thinking ahead In any team, there are 3 goals to always maintain awareness of: 1. Ideal - never attainable, but we [imagine] it when we don't have experience in the domain, NEVER set standards based on this goal 2. Likely - based on constraints (e.g., schedules, life events like [weddings], [new baby] etc., and [hardships]; moves around a lot, but grows higher as workers gain experience in doing things, set all incentives based on this 3. Required - based on VERY hard and measurable constraints (e.g., time, money), gets more severe consequences the larger a project grows if they're not met, set all disciplinary action based on this "Bookending," which involves estimating two different scenarios: a dire scenario (the lower bookend), and a rosy scenario (the upper bookend). "The future is uncertain, so my investments can't hinge on knowing the future. I look for situations where the bookends suggest that I can invest wisely without knowing exactly what the future holds." Imagine the future "death" of a project and ask, "What killed it?" unlike [entrepreneurship] or any other personal [decision], ALL management (and to some extent [family] matters as well) REQUIRE a phased approach: 1. Current Situation is in place 2. New Situation runs parallel to Current Situation, with constant communication of Current Situation being phased out 3. Eventually, New Situation is 100% on-track for Current Situation to work well 4. Current Situation is given a public warning of deactivation (if anyone is still there) with instructions to move to New Situation 5. keep maintaining Current Situation until it's completely outmoded (and even a bit farther for [legal](legally safe) and [tax] reasons A survey of American homeowners who had remodeled their kitchens found that, on average, they had expected the job to cost $18,658; in fact, they ended up paying an average of $38,769. The greatest responsibility for avoiding the planning fallacy lies with the decision makers who approve the plan. If they do not recognize the need for an outside view, they commit a planning fallacy. The prevalent tendency to underweight or ignore distributional information is perhaps the major source of error in forecasting. Planners should therefore make every effort to frame the forecasting problem so as to facilitate utilizing all the distributional information that is available. This may be considered the single most important piece of advice regarding how to increase accuracy in forecasting through improved methods. Identify an appropriate reference class (kitchen renovations, large railway projects, etc.). Obtain the statistics of the reference class (in terms of cost per mile of railway, or of the percentage by which expenditures exceeded budget). Use the statistics to generate a baseline prediction. Use specific information about the case to adjust the baseline prediction, if there are particular reasons to expect the optimistic bias to be more or less pronounced in this project than in others of the same type. Executives too easily fall victim to the planning fallacy. In its grip, they make decisions based on delusional optimism rather than on a rational weighting of gains, losses, and probabilities. They overestimate benefits and underestimate costs. They spin scenarios of success while overlooking the potential for mistakes and miscalculations. As a result, they pursue initiatives that are unlikely to come in on budget or on time or to deliver the expected returns - or even to be completed. In this view, people often (but not always) take on risky projects because they are overly optimistic about the odds they face. This is an explanation of why people litigate, why they start wars, and why they open small businesses. If you are genetically endowed with an optimistic bias, you hardly need to be told that you are a lucky person - you already feel fortunate. An optimistic attitude is largely inherited, and it is part of a general disposition for well-being, which may also include a preference for seeing the bright side of everything. If you were allowed one wish for your child, seriously consider wishing him or her optimism. Optimists are normally cheerful and happy, and therefore popular; they are resilient in adapting to failures and hardships, their chances of clinical depression are reduced, their immune system is stronger, they take better care of their health, they feel healthier than others and are in fact likely to live longer. A study of people who exaggerate their expected life span beyond actuarial predictions showed that they work longer hours, are more optimistic about their future Optimistic individuals play a disproportionate role in shaping our lives. Their decisions make a difference; they are the inventors, the entrepreneurs, the political and military leaders - not average people. They got to where they are by seeking challenges and taking risks. They are talented and they have been lucky, almost certainly luckier than they acknowledge. The people who have the greatest influence on the lives of others are likely to be optimistic and overconfident, and to take more risks than they realize. These persistent (or obstinate) individuals doubled their initial losses before giving up. Significantly, persistence after discouraging advice was relatively common among inventors who had a high score on a personality measure of optimism. The damage caused by overconfident CEOs is compounded when the business press anoints them as celebrities; the evidence indicates that prestigious press awards to the CEO are costly to stockholders. The authors write, "We find that firms with award-winning CEOs subsequently underperform, in terms both of stock and of operating performance. At the same time, CEO compensation increases, CEOs spend more time on activities outside the company such as writing books and sitting on outside boards, and they are more likely to engage in earnings management." To explain entrepreneurial optimism, cognitive biases play an important role. We focus on our goal, anchor on our plan, and neglect relevant base rates, exposing ourselves to the planning fallacy. We focus on what we want to do and can do, neglecting the plans and skills of others. Both in explaining the past and in predicting the future, we focus on the causal role of skill and neglect the role of luck. We are therefore prone to an illusion of control. We focus on what we know and neglect what we do not know, which makes us overly confident in our beliefs. I have had several occasions to ask founders and participants in innovative start-ups a question: To what extent will the outcome of your effort depend on what you do in your firm? This is evidently an easy question; the answer comes quickly and in my small sample it has never been less than 80%. Even when they are not sure they will succeed, these bold people think their fate is almost entirely in their own hands. They are surely wrong: the outcome of a start-up depends as much on the achievements of its competitors and on changes in the market as on its own efforts. However, WY SIATI plays its part, and entrepreneurs naturally focus on what they know best - their plans and actions and the most immediate threats and opportunities, such as the availability of funding. They know less about their competitors and therefore find it natural to imagine a future in which the competition plays little part. Entrepreneurial firms that fail but signal new markets to more qualified competitors "optimistic martyrs" - good for the economy but bad for their investors. A survey in which the chief financial officers of large corporations estimated the returns of the Standard & Poor's index over the following year. The Duke scholars collected 11,600 such forecasts and examined their accuracy. The conclusion was straightforward: financial officers of large corporations had no clue about the short-term future of the stock market; the correlation between their estimates and the true value was slightly less than zero! When they said the market would go down, it was slightly more likely than not that it would go up. The answer that a truthful CFO would offer is plainly ridiculous. A CFO who informs his colleagues that "there is a good chance that the S&P returns will be between -10% and +30%" can expect to be laughed out of the room. The wide confidence interval is a confession of ignorance, which is not socially acceptable for someone who is paid to be knowledgeable in financial matters. Even if they knew how little they know, the executives would be penalized for admitting it. The emotional, cognitive, and social factors that support exaggerated optimism are a heady brew, which sometimes leads people to take risks that they would avoid if they knew the odds. The contribution of optimism to good implementation is certainly positive. The main benefit of optimism is resilience in the face of setbacks. Someone who lacks a delusional sense of significance will wilt in the face of repeated experiences of multiple small failures and rare successes, the fate of most small business. When the organization has almost come to an important decision but has not formally committed itself, Klein proposes gathering for a brief session a group of individuals who are knowledgeable about the decision. The premise of the session is a short speech: "Imagine that we are a year into the future. We implemented the plan as it now exists. The outcome was a disaster. Please take 5 to 10 minutes to write a brief history of that disaster." Premortem has two main advantages: it overcomes the groupthink that affects many teams once a decision appears to have been made, and it unleashes the imagination of knowledgeable individuals in a much-needed direction. ## fixing and optimizing Suppose that you go to bed tonight and sleep well. Sometime, in the middle of the night, while you are sleeping, a miracle happens and all the troubles that brought you here are resolved. When you wake up in the morning, what's the first small sign you'd see that would make you think, 'Well, something must have happened - the problem is gone!'?" The Miracle Question doesn't ask you to describe the miracle itself; it asks you to identify the tangible signs that the miracle happened. A second question, which is perhaps even more important. The Exception Question: "When was the last time you saw a little bit of the miracle, even just for a short time?" Demonstrate, in a subtle way, is that the client is capable of solving her own problem. As a matter of fact, the client is offering up proof that she's already solved it. Let's replay that scene, where things were working for you. What was happening? How did you behave? You are simply asking yourself, "What's working and how can we do more of it?" Big problem, small solution. This is a theme you will see again and again. Big problems are rarely solved with commensurately big solutions. Instead, they are most often solved by a sequence of small solutions, sometimes over weeks, sometimes over decades. "What's working, and how can we do more of it?" Sounds simple, doesn't it? Yet, in the real world, this obvious question is almost never asked. Instead, the question we ask is more problem focused: "What's broken, and how do we fix it?" ## key supervisory challenges 1. Communicating effectively with team members, including setting clear expectations and resolving conflicts. 2. Prioritizing and managing tasks while supporting the team. 3. Evaluating employee performance and addressing underperformance. 4. Delegating tasks effectively and handling trust or control issues. 5. Navigating organizational changes and ensuring effective leadership. 6. Managing diverse personalities and fostering teamwork. 7. Making tough decisions while balancing team and organizational needs. 8. Supporting professional growth through coaching and mentorship. 9. Managing workload and preventing stress and burnout. 10. Ensuring high levels of employee engagement and motivation. ## making decisions Fixing on a decision prematurely reduces your options, perhaps to the point of eliminating the successful choice. You'll learn a little bit more every day. You'll learn more about the users, the project itself, your team, and the technology. That means you'll be at your peak of intelligence at the very end of the project and at your most ignorant at the very beginning. So, do you want to make decisions early on? No; you want to defer closure for as long as possible in order to make a better decision later. But that means critical issues may stay unsettled for a long time, which makes many people acutely uncomfortable. Resist the pressure. Know that you will reach a decision, and the matter will be settled, just not today. Agile software development embraces the idea of working with uncertainty. Early on, you don't know what the project end date will really be. You're not 100 percent certain which features will be present in the next iteration. You don't know how many iterations there will be. And that's perfectly OK: that's the sort of uncertainty you want to be comfortable with. Lead. Do not be led. You have employed smart people. Great. But you are their leader. If you sniff an opportunity, get them to consider it. If they still don't get excited, take the project into your private office and begin it there. Do not leave the opportunity within the company to be sabotaged, focus-grouped and committeed to death. To be safe and sustainable, you want to see 6 mos advance operating expenses saved up ## managementmethodologies_waterfall The best SDLC available was [waterfall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model) with all of its problems that were not lost on us even then. The whole industry did very long release projects, such as two months of requirements gathering and design specification followed by nine months of coding and then three months of testing. Even if we did see then (and we mostly didn't) that small, frequent releases were better in a whole bunch of ways, we couldn't really do it. It was expensive to ship on physical media, and disruptive to our customers to have to do frequent installs. ## sivers - Seeking Wisdom - by Peter Bevelin_misjudgmentsandmistakes #### 1. Systems thinking ** Failing to consider that actions have both intended and unintended consequences. Includes failing to consider secondary and higher order consequences and inevitable implications. By solving one problem, we generate another one and sometimes create an even worse one. ** Failing to consider the whole system in which actions and reactions take place, the important factors that make up the system, their relationships and effects of changes on system outcome. Try to optimize the whole and not a system's individual parts. ** Failing to consider the likely reactions of others - what is best to do may depend on what others do. ** Failing to consider the implications of winning a bid - overestimating value and paying too much. Auction: What you won was the right to pay more for something than everyone else thought it was worth. The other party is most likely to accept our offer when it is least favorable to us. ** Overestimating predictive ability or using unknowable factors in making predictions. Nobody can forecast interest or currency rates, the GDP, turning points in the economy, the stock market, etc. Massive amounts of information don't help. #### 2. Scale and limits ** Failing to consider that changes in size or time influence form, function and behavior. Adding $20k to the payroll should be evaluated as a $3M decision, over lifetime, factoring in raises, benefits, and other expenses. ** Failing to consider breakpoints, critical thresholds or limits Advantage of scale: In some businesses, things cascade toward the overwhelming dominance of one firm - to a winner-take-all situation. ** Failing to consider constraints - that a system's performance is constrained by its weakest link. Warren Buffett says: "It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results." In many business activities a few things can produce much of the value. Ask: How do we allocate our time, work, attention and money? Can we identify the few things that really matter? #### 3. Causes ** Not understanding what causes desired results. ** Believing cause resembles its effect - that a big effect must have a big or complicated cause. ** Underestimating the influence of randomness in bad or good outcomes. ** Mistaking an effect for its cause. Includes failing to consider that many effects may originate from one common root cause. ** Attributing outcome to a single cause when there are multiple causes. ** Mistaking correlation for cause. ** Failing to consider that an outcome may be consistent with alternative explanations. ** Drawing conclusions about causes from selective data. Includes identifying the wrong cause because it seems the obvious one based on a single observed effect. Also failing to consider information or evidence that is missing. There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. Obviousness is always the enemy to correctness. "Life is hard," he retorted, "Compared to what?" We tend to ignore alternatives, and therefore we fail to make appropriate comparisons. ** Not comparing the difference in conditions, behavior and factors between negative and positive outcomes in similar situations when explaining an outcome. #### 4. Numbers and their meaning ** Looking at isolated numbers - failing to consider relationships and magnitudes. Includes not using basic math to count and quantity. Also not differentiating between relative and absolute risk. ** Underestimating the effect of exponential growth. ** Underestimating the time value of money. #### 5. Probabilities and number of possible outcomes ** Underestimating risk exposure in situations where relative frequency (or comparable data) and/or magnitude of consequences is unknown or changing over time. ** Underestimating the number of possible outcomes for unwanted events. Includes underestimating the probability and severity of rare or extreme events. ** Overestimating the chance of rare but widely publicized and highly emotional events and underestimating the chance of common but less publicized events. Most people think dramatically, not quantitatively. ** Failing to consider both probabilities and consequences (expected value). ** Believing events where chance plays a role are self-correcting - that previous outcomes of independent events have predictive value in determining future outcomes. If we get a once in 100-year storm this year, another big one could happen next year. There is a 1% chance that the event will happen in any given year. There is no memory of the past. ** Believing one can control the outcome of events where chance is involved. People were more reluctant to give up a lottery ticket they had chosen themselves, than one selected at random for them. The lesson is, if you want to sell lottery tickets, let people choose their own numbers instead of randomly drawing them. ** Judging financial decisions by evaluating gains and losses instead of final state of wealth and personal value. ** Failing to consider the consequences of being wrong. We should never risk something we have and need for something we don't need. You only have to get rich once. The added money has no utility whatsoever. #### 6. Scenarios ** Overestimating the probability of scenarios where all of a series of steps must be achieved for a wanted outcome. Also underestimating opportunities for failure and what normally happens in similar situations. It's not that easy to make lots of money in a business in a capitalistic society. There are people that are looking at what you're doing every day and trying to figure out a way to do it better, underprice you, bring out a better product or whatever it may be. ** Underestimating the probability of systems failure - scenarios composed of many parts where system failure can happen one way or another. Includes failing to consider that time horizon changes probabilities. Also assuming independence when it is not present and/or assuming events are equally likely when they are not. ** Not adding a factor of safety for known and unknown risks. Size of factor depends on the consequences of failure, how well the risks are understood, systems characteristics and degree of control. Simplify and standardize processes, and use checklists to decrease the likelihood of operator errors. #### 7. Coincidences and miracles ** Underestimating that surprises and improbable events happen, somewhere, sometime, to someone, if they have enough opportunities (large enough size or time) to happen. The most astonishingly incredible coincidence imaginable would be the complete absence of all coincidences. ** Looking for meaning, searching for causes and making up patterns for chance events, especially events that have emotional implications. ** Failing to consider cases involving the absence of a cause or effect. We pay no attention to times when nothing happens. We shouldn't find significance in amazing past events. It's easy to be a prophet. You make twenty-five predictions and the ones that come true are the ones you talk about. Nobody keeps a record of their erroneous prophecies since they are infinite and everyday. If the opposite of a given statement is more I likely, the statement is probably false. Mysteries are not necessarily miracles. #### 8. Reliability of case evidence ** Overweighing individual case evidence and under-weighing the prior probability (probability estimate of an event before considering new evidence that might change it) considering for example, the base rate (relative frequency of an attribute or event in a representative comparison group), or evidence from many similar cases. Includes failing to consider the probability of a random matth, and the probability of a false positive and false negative. Also failing to consider a relevant comparison population that bears the characteristic we are seeking. #### 9. Misrepresentative evidence ** Failing to consider changes in factors, context or conditions when using past evidence to predict likely future outcomes. Includes not searching for explanations to why past outcome happened, what is required to make past record continue, and what forces can change it. If you could make money based on what has worked the past 20 years, all of the richest people would be librarians. The man who fed the chicken every day wrings its neck instead. The past is a good guide to the future - but not always. ** Overestimating evidence from a single case or small or unrepresentative samples. We'd rather be roughly right than precisely wrong. In other words, if something is terribly important, we'll guess at it rather than just make our judgment based on what happens to be easily countable. ** Underestimating the influence of chance in performance (success and failure). No victor believes in chance. ** Only seeing positive outcomes - paying little or no attention to negative outcomes and prior probabilities. We give too little attention to failures. ** Failing to consider variability of outcomes and their frequency. ** Failing to consider regression - in any series of events where chance is involved unique outcomes tends to regress back to the average outcome.