Notes on AWS, Big Data, Machine Learning and Leadership: Leadership

Works well when
- Unclear who's got the ball and what should be happening
- There is something important but no one feels like it's their responsibility
- Solving complex cross-functional issue

John Allspaw - How Your Systems Keep Running Day After Day
People have "mental models" how the system works
- They operate "above the line"
  - Nobody can see "the code running" (below the line)
- Models are incomplete
Incidents are unplanned Investments in company survival
- Burn money, time, reputation, staff
- How do you maximize ROI? Learn!
Incidents provide calibration
- decision, attention, coordination, escalation
An incident can be "company" destroying moment (Equifax)
- At the beginning we don't know
All incidents can be worse
- What went well? How did we stop it from escalating further?
  - Important to make sure we don't "remove" that accidentally
Company that can learn from the has competitive advantage

Goodheart's Law
- "When a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure"
  - Number of nails: 1000's of tiny nails
  - Weight of nails: a few giant heavy nails

"Taking the high road has never once come back to bite me in the ass."
Amygdala - hijacking
SCARF (threats that triggers us)
- Status - sense of self-worth
- Certainty - familiar situations require less energy to process. Lack of clarity increases stress
- Autonomy - giving autonomy gives a reward response
- Relatedness - sense of belonging with others
- Fairness - if something is unfair brain goes into defense mode
See also: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/mainframe-world/managing-people-the-scarf-model-65668

optimize for long-term work relationships (even if you change jobs)
be a light bulb that lights up dark places
even the strongest bridge needs flexibility to stay strong
Disagreement
- from 1 to 10: how much do I care (see override bar)
- first one to draw a visual wins
Transparency in communication
- core message
- how recipient may be feeling
- my own understanding
in leadership don't worry so much about career direction

Video: Roy Rapoport (Culture and the games)

Financial motivations backfire easily
Define what behavior you want (e.g. innovation, availability, collaboration)
- Build the "rules" that don't contradict this goal, e.g.
  - Avoid zero-sum games
    - Stack ranking
  - Wrong financial incentives
Override bar
- How certain I am that I'm right?
- What is the cost if someone does it his way?
  - Is it really worth forcing your mind?

Asking for permission moves responsibility onto manager
You should tell me what you want to do and we will discuss risks and alternatives
Based on "Turn the ship around" book

Taking notes
- Helps remember and organize thoughts (filtering + preprocessing)
- Signals commitment
Be deliberately redundant (overcommunicate)

"Senior" is very ambigous
- 2 years of experience in new framework
- 20 years of experience
"Culture fit" is used to hide biases
Cojoined trinagles (Direction Provided vs Required) is nice but oversimplified
Senior can be measured on 3 dimensions
- Technical Ability
- Leadership
  - Find&Fix broken things
  - Persuasion
- Connectedness
  - Part of larger whole
  - Desire to contribute

Better talk about "mature" than "senior"
They know, nothing they do is perfect. Upon completing project:
- What am I missing?
- How will this NOT work?
- Can you shoot holes in my thinking?
- Is it easy to troubleshoot, operate, extend?

Notes on AWS, Big Data, Machine Learning and Leadership