One of the key ideas of Nonviolent Communication is to remove judgment from our language when we want to communicate constructively. I gave an example of this in Judgment is a Silent Killer: I shared feedback with a customer on our cooperation thus far — all intended as very constructive. However, I made a mistake: I slipped in one piece of judgement, and that ended up being the only thing being heard by the customer.

Wikipedia: Test-driven development (TDD) is a software development process relying on software requirements being converted to test cases before software is fully developed, and tracking all software development by repeatedly testing the software against all test cases. This is opposed to software being developed first and test cases created later. Once you get into it, TDD is a beautifully satisfying experience: we write the specification of software to be built in the form of programmatic tests; these tests will all initially fail (turn red).

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. These are essentially the first sentences in the first book on leadership I ever read: Leadership is an Art by Max Depree, probably about 8 years ago. “Define reality” — what does that really mean? Isn’t there just one, like, “real” reality — and some see it, and some don’t? Case study: Donald J.

“Praise in public, criticize in private.” Take any feedback training, read almost any management book, this is the advice you’ll find. It’s so wide-spread that it’s just considered fact. This how things ought to be done. Period. But should it? Think back to your school years. You sit in the classroom and your teacher is handing out the graded papers you submitted a week earlier. He stops in front your desk and rather than giving your paper to you, he holds it up in the air.

An exercise: Stand in front of a group, and say something meaningful on a topic the audience cares about. No, no, that’s not all, here comes the hard part: Now, look around the room (realistically: zoom room). Hopefully you see familiar faces. Now do this exercise in empathic listening: for each audience member (yes, this is a foreach loop), mentally put yourself in their shoes, or ears, or whatever.

I am very disappointed in all of you. Just a few years ago, when Joe had a baby, the whole company would chip in. We were able to buy a great present. And now, just 17 people out of 120!? What happened to you, why don’t you care? This is the gist of an email sent as part of a company-wide email thread attempting to collect some money to buy a present for a first-time father.

In April I wrote about the No More Feedback book. Ever since it’s been in the back of my mind, and I’ve played with and researched some ideas on this topic. Let me share some of my musings and insights. A brief recap of the core idea of “No More Feedback” (in case you haven’t lost sleep over it like I have) — again, this is my summary of the book, not my own conclusion (although I do buy into it):

In a previous company, I had an engineer work on a feature for the better part of three months. The feature was well-specified, all requirements were clear. When the work was done, and the feature delivered, a demo session was organized. As the product manager demoed the feature, describing the scenario in which our customer would use it, the engineer said: “Oh, that’s what it’s used for? I could have built something different that filled that need in three days.

In a previous post I wrote about the “No More Feedback” book. I’m not done with this topic yet. In fact, I skipped a concept Carol Sanford focuses on quite a bit in the book: your essence. I realize how hippie this may sound, but as usual: bear with me. So, dear reader, let’s continue our journey to make sense of a world without feedback, a world where everything you assumed to be “right” is turned up-side-down.

At OLX I send out a weekly update email every Friday. It is an attempt to be transparent about what I’ve been working on that week and helps me reflect. Sometimes I also muse a bit on more broader topics I’ve been thinking about, or books I’ve read. This is an excerpt of this Friday’s email, I thought it may be interesting for people outside of the company as well.

Or: How to fight the hierarchy of disappointment Chances are that in your company, once it hits a certain size, the hierarchy of disappointment makes an appearance — and, not to be hyperbolic about it, it is slowly killing your company. “What the hell is the hierarchy of disappointment!?” At the top of this hierarchy is the Business. In the Business we identify opportunities in the market that are going to be huge (some would say yuge).

The hardest part of my job is not technical — it’s communication, specifically: giving feedback. I fail at this over and over, and I see other people having trouble as well. In fact, I fear that giving effective feedback is so hard that people are too scared to do it. That’s a loss, because giving feedback, in my view, is an essential mechanism to improve. And I like to believe that everybody wants to improve.

So, you decided to build a real application. Not a toy. Not a hobby project. Something that’s supposed to last, supposed to scale, supposed to work and remain reliable. If you’re in any way like me, I bet right now you’re browsing the interwebs like crazy to find the hottest new technology you get your hands on to use in this new venture. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!