Separating backlog from roadmap allows you to specialize the backlog to be more useful for your team and design the roadmap to be more useful for your stakeholders. #aep19
The backlog interface: It’s always more interesting to discuss which of two things we should do next, rather than whether something is worth doing. #aep19
Roll out one process change at a time, and don’t roll out the next change until the previous change has *enthusiastic compliance*. #aep19
Tension in management: staying far enough out of the details to let folks innovate, yet staying near enough to keep the work well-aligned with the company’s value structures. #aep19
A/B testing interviews is a nice idea but expensive and requires sufficient volume to be useful. #aep19
Hiring for potential is a major vector for bias. Do so only with a robust, objective and consistent rubric for potential. #aep19
Design by committee almost always leads to incremental change. #aep19
On designing interviews: Avoid testing for polish as opposed to testing for a particular skill. #aep19
The work required to design an effective interview loop is roughly equivalent to writing a career ladder, so I’ve found that skipping this step is an act of false economy. #aep19
On splitting roles: As you move away from generalized roles and toward specialists, an unexpected consequence is that your organization has far more single points of failure. #aep19
Designation momentum is the term for the natural tendency of a performance process to consistently produce the same evaluations for the same people despite changes in performance. #aep19
surprise is the cardinal sin of performance management #aep19
Performance designations are usually not meant to be the primary mechanism for handling poor performance. Waiting for performance designations to deal with performance issues is typically a sign of managerial avoidance. #aep19
Study the distribution, don't enforce it. #aep19
Comparing folks against each other tends to introduce false equivalencies without adding much clarity. Focus on the ladder instead. #aep19
Read, don’t present. Many calibration systems depend heavily on whether managers are effective presenters. Don’t allow managers to pitch their candidates in the room, but instead have everyone read the manager review. This reduces the pressure to perform in the calibration session itself. #aep19
The extra knobs in more complicated systems support more granularity, but potentially simply create the impression of rigor while remaining equally challenging to implement in a consistent, fair way. #aep19
Crisp boundaries are important as they provide those on a career ladder a useful mental model of where they are in their journey, who their peers are, and whom they should view as role models. #aep19
If you want to shape your company’s culture, inclusion, or performance, this is your most valuable entry point. #aep19
