Episode Breakdown:

0 — introductions

5:00 — leadership and teams

8:15 — importance of negotiation beyond salary

9:15 — how to think about negotiation ("win win or no deal")

12:30 — focus on goals

13:30 — Are these options valuable?

17:15 — Adjusting for market

19:40 — Changing perspective on where you add value

24:00 — when to bring in an attorney

26:00 — Losing fear of hearing "no"

28:00 — What does an unreasonable ask look like?

David Subar

 David has served as at Chief Technology Officer and Chief Product Officer at several companies, including at Break Media (as CTO), before its merger with Alloy to become Defy Media, and at Zest Finance, where he served as CPO.

David has served as an interim CTO/CPO at a number of companies, including Lynda.com (sold to LinkeedIn for $1.5B), PlutoTV, AirMedia and a major studio, where he has advised on product development, recruiting, architecture and security.

 David has led teams of greater than 100 and has built products of over 600MM page views/month and greater than 1MM video views a day on mobile and a similar number on the web.

Erick Herring

 Erick has been building internet-based systems since before the advent of the commercial Internet. He has held executive roles for the last 15+ years and led teams of 100+ in the development of systems for Privlo, Local Corporation, Feedback, WebVisible, Toyota, LRN, California Federal Bank, Ticketmaster.com, Variety.com, Dell Computer, and many other Fortune 1000 and startup companies.

 In addition to his mainstay role as CTO (usually including responsibility for Product), Erick has served as Chief Technology & Marketing Officer (Privlo), Chief Security Officer (Digital Evolution/SOA.com, Zenith Insurance), General Manager (Adapt Technologies - sold to WebVisible - and Feedback.com), and Founder (Townloop, Adapt, Feedback.com).

Related Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath

http://www.agilemanifesto.org/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_side_of_the_Force

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_law

Uncle Bob is a software developer, speaker and author. He has been writing code for 50 years and has written several books about software craftsmanship.

This is a great episode if:

You want to be a better developer

You want to better support your development team

You need a push to write better code and say "no"

What you will hear about:

Common mistakes developers make

The ethics of being a software developer

Impact of the fast growth of the software industry

Related Links:

Clean Coders

This is a great episode if:

You are researching your offsite/offshore options

You want to understand how to ensure a good ROI from offsite teams

You want to understand how to mitigate the risks of offsite teams

What you will hear about:

The impact of cultural differences

The value of investing in the team

Ways to ensure alignment

This is a great episode if:

You are a leader who wants to create a strong culture in your company

You want to perform user testing in a sustainable and valuable way

You are looking to outsource a project

What you will hear about:

Thoughtbot culture, history and process

User Testing

What happens when you invest in your people

Related Interviews:

Robert Richman

Debbie Madden

This is a great episode if:

You are a technical leader who works with offshore teams

You want to ensure your team(s) are aligned with business priorities

You are looking for new ways to measure success

What you will hear about:

Off-shore teams

Tactics to align with business goals with team processes

Batman

Links:

Cynefin

Related Interviews:

Ken Judy

Jessica Barnett

Relevant audience:

You are a technical leader who cannot get the resources, people or buy in you need.

You want your teams to learn and make decisions independently

Your team(s) are having trouble collaborating

What you will hear about:

Tactics to gain influence

Retrospectives

Experiential Workshops

Training and Learning with Esther:

Problem Solving Leadership (http://estherderby.com/workshops/problem-solving-leadership-psl)

Monthly teleconferences (http://www.estherderby.com/qa-teleconferences)

Agile Retrospectives (http://amzn.com/0977616649)

Related Podcasts:

Dan Mezick - http://bit.ly/1q3lZ5W

Robert Richman - http://bit.ly/1u6eIUJ

Joseph also trained as a filmmaker. His films have appeared in over a dozen festivals and have been licensed to HBO. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1982.

You can find out more by visiting:

www.bensonbrandstrategy.com

www.linkedin.com/in/josephbensonbrandstrategy

Notes From Interview

Becoming the “Clear Choice” 

Differentiate clients/customers in minds of customers 

Understand occasions of choosing company

Center message around a single word

Client Profile

Statistics and demographics

Look at the “stories they tell themselves about themselves”

Understand how they make decisions and why they chose competitors

The Best Stories

Tells the consumer their need will be fulfilled

Come in many forms — pictures, colors, fonts, sounds, words

You have to define the story, not the customer

The Discipline of Market Leaders 

The narrower the focus, the stronger the brand

Overcoming a Bad Story

Standup and admit the mistakes

Hold leadership accountable

Create new clear policies and live up to them

Americans believe strongly in second chances

Robert built Zappos Insights from a small website to a thriving multi-million dollar business teaching over 25,000 students per year. Through his work, Robert has been responsible for improving the employee culture at hundreds of companies like Procter & Gamble, Whole Foods and Amazon. 

Previously a Zappos spokesperson and authority on employee culture, Robert is a sought after keynote speaker at conferences around the world and has been hired to teach culture in person at companies like Google, Toyota, and Eli Lilly. He has pioneered a number of innovative techniques to build culture, such as bringing improv comedy to the workplace.

His new book, The Culture Blueprint, is a systematic guide to how a workplace can help people grow, inspire amazing service, and ultimately drive revenue through amazing culture.

More information is available at his website, www.RobertRichman.com. 

Culture

Culture exists when there are more than 2 people in the room.

Culture is about beliefs. 

Impact beliefs by experience. 

Strong vs Weak Culture

Not good or bad cultures — strong versus weak cultures

Weak culture is one in which there is not alignment between actions and values folds

Strong culture you can walk in and see the values in action without anyone telling them the story

Improv

Not improv for performance, but applying principles to a group

Agree and take to the next level

Start with the smallest of acts

Practice failing

Costs of Weak Culture

Unfulfilled promises to employees and customers

Lack of trust to bring best self to table

Subtle discomfort and insecurity

Results of Cultural Experience

Emotional Honesty — gives way to open communication

when someone is real with you, that’s when you can trust them

The Book

Improv and open space work best when culture already strong

Book is about getting tight into vision and values

Basic elements of culture — on boarding, creating leaders, teaching customer service

Successful Onboarding

Extend time for on boarding

Have several people start at same time

Create two-way conversations around expectations and what’s needed for success

Why Open Space?

Culture ownership needs to be on the leaders and the people

Open space is team building and strategy session at same time

Unlocking creating potential of company

If a place like Zappos who usually gets 10-20k calls a day can take a day and turn off phones to work on themselves, other companies can as well.

The Power of Stories

Story telling is “cultural currency”

getstory.com — power of somebody seeing themselves in the story

Related episodes: Ken J, Dan M

How does a team realize their best?

Improve in small steps, not trying to change the world overnight

Expand on strengths

Identify risks, past success, factors in control

Make the process of software development more reliable

Honesty

What are your goals, are they realistic?

Adding value is making product better

People’s opinions are based on past life experiences

Risk

Decisive — set tripwires

“Liftoff” meeting — Diana Larson, Liftoff

Create working agreements, risk assessment

Proactively monitor risks

Tools to help stay aligned with principles and priorities

Have deadlines for action items and follow up 

3 things you will stop doing in next 30 days to make room to do this?

Categorize how you spend your time

Other episodes mentioned: Ken J

Trello Retrospectives

See Jess’ post detailing their process

Its the one time the whole team is focused on improving our lives

Influencing Business

Retros pulled across company, starting with c-suite

Creating visibility on overwhelm

Many different ways to tell the same story

How can we ensure if this is the most important thing it is what we are focused on?

What worked

Demonstrated velocity improvements with focused efforts

Pushed back on requests

Gained clarity on top priorities

If you want us to do great work, this is the way we’re going to do it

Needed support to say “no”

VP of Technology saying “you present the facts, you drive home principles and I’ll make sure it goes okay” (and following through by defending the team)

Contract between business and technology agreeing to use Agile to manage development

Performance connected to celebration and investment in your people

If you believe in your principles, find ways, experiment with ways that you can communicate those principles and make it happen.

In Part 2 of this interview, John and I continue our discussion about founders and startups needing (or not needing) CTOs. Red flags to watch out for (both the founder and the CTO) as well as some stories and philosophies based on John's experiences and expertise.

Part 1 can be found here.

John Shiple — Freelance CTO, technology advisor — triages businesses, help businesses scale, and launches new businesses. He's been in technology over 20 years and loves building internet sites. 

In Part 1 of this interview, John and I discuss important topics for non-technical Founders to consider including recruiting challenges, expressing ideas, and the importance of a technical leader. This is a great episode for both founders and technical leaders to get an understanding of common challenges and misalignments.

Notes from Interview

Collection of Videos about CTOs, recuriting and startups by John (created by DocStoc)

Common weaknesses (business side)

miscommunication on product needs

lack of background in technology 

fragile relationships between business and technology

technology is the least important - you need to have the right people building the right things

Recruiting Help

more challenging than other domains

if you have a good friend from college that knows CS, get them onboard

every techie is working and if they aren’t its because they are choosing not to

John will be teaching a class at GA on How to be a CTO (this November in LA)

Interview highlights

Article Summary 

1. Companies need to advertise opportunities in a way that is appealing to women

2. Girls need messaging from a young age that encourages exploration into engineering

3. Engineering needs to be discussed more in the media and schools

Projects Creating Shifts

Hopscotch — Getting girls excited about tech at young ages

Changing the Conversation -- Initiative to change the way we speak about engineering

Girls Explore Engineering

Santa Monica Youth Tech Program  

VC needs more women too!

oasis summit -- vow to be chic

Jesse Draper and Valley Girl Ventures 

Have a good story about tech on the west side? Contact Joanna

Past interviews mentioned on the show:

Josh Bigelow

Luke Melia

Ryan and Wendy discuss the lonely entrepreneuer, the challenges around working by yourself as well as how his company, Collectively, is evolving. It is a fun conversation for anyone who has worked by themselves, started a company or likes the Borg.

Notes from the Interview

lonely entrepreneur

corporate culture sucks…talk in a way, dress in a way, interact in a way with people that just isn’t you

companies provide colleagues

socially isolated environment

bipolar role — company cheerleader and risk mitigator

challenges

we’re all afraid to get our stuff in front of people

rabbit hole w/o outside opinions

fear inhibits success

evolve based on experiments

This is a great episode for technical leaders and team members to understand how to create value on their technical team beyond pushing tickets. We also discuss how the day to day actions and behaviors of leadership impact the decisions and values of the team. 

Notes from Interview

Improv Theater Takeaways 

in theater people have a good sense of the lifecycle

adjusting expectations based on constraints and timeframe

constraints support creativity

you can’t get performance from an actor without interacting with the actor

Typical Environments

developers are creating the product and often don’t have say in what they are crafting

kill yourself to get to date, not make the date and then its arbitrary, so they just set another date

only way to have accountability is to have a date

Team Dynamics

different personalities combine

having right environment that attracts the right talent takes a long time 

i wanted a way of working that allowed us as a small team to take advantage our our individual strengths and not be victim of individual weaknesses

Leadership

developers are achieving what their company wants them to achieve

they will do what your values/actions tell them you want

people say they value quality, but their day to day actions and priority do not

if you cannot have collaboration around features, you will automatically sacrifice quality

Valuing Quality

model through collaboration

humility from the stakeholders

listen to risk

what you want to achieve -- not how

creative ways of measuring value

Antipatterns

developers are there to code and efficiency is about passing off tickets

master/slave paradigm

by the time it gets into debs hands, the business has already made too many decisions that limit impact devs can have on limiting work and creativity

its all about how many people are on something and not who they are

Where to start

a conversation with business, product and developer is most efficient conversation

once you have that practice internal, build relationships with outsiders

often time people asking for work are not in technology and developers are not domain experts

coding is meaningless without understanding the problem at hand

The value is in the team

companies that think they are agile and constantly reform team

team reforms every time it changes

small group who know/trust each other, needs to be reestablished if even one person changes

core talent of development team is problem solving

Fallacies

there is value in variety, can lead to a new spark of creativity and excitement

people will roll on/off team, that is life

never have to worry - oh no team has been together too long, i need to shake things up

Agile 

agile is not about delivering more stuff, its about delivering more value

accomplishment comes from focus on what really matters

achieve outcome with least amount of waste.

you need to understand success on small scale to know what success looks like on large scale

You get what you ask for

devs close stories when it meets the letter of what you ask for

schedule pressure makes it too easy to not get it "done done"

if you criticize velocity, your team will increase velocity, but most likely deliver less value

Read more of Ken's thoughts and experiences on his blog.

How does your team stack up? Ask the right questions.

In this podcast, Luke discusses Yapp’s early adoption of Ember.js, and its impact on revenue, community and recruiting. We dive into building community, unique takeaways about Ruby, and the many benefits of community. This is a great talk for people interested in speaking, teams who need to grow, and leaders who want to infuse a vision into their culture.

Ember History

Adopted Ember from Sproutcore

Ember consulting funds Yapp

Ember.js meeting up NYC has over 1100 people

Ruby is Unique Community

No big corp behind community, the driving force was individual

Motivation, style, stems from roots

Community takes responsibility to fix problems

Lessons from Ruby Community

Matz is nice and so we are nice

People talking about it made it true

Took into Ember — together we help folks climb the learning curve

After a while you are saying the same words and instead of vision it becomes true

Impact of Community on Hiring

First crack at folks as they come onto the market

Apprenticeship programs

Find talent, be attractive to talent

Talented devs don’t come onto the market… they reach out to a few friends and have a new job

Other Ramblings

Lightening talk great introduction to public speaking

Differences between Silicon Beach and Silicon Alley

Historian Role

Community Builder? Ping @lukemelia on twitter

Tweet @embernyc to find out where they are going for drinks the evening of a meetup

This interview is a continuation of Part I

Notes from Interview

After Open Space

Proceedings are the beginning

Adoption is learning through experimentation, inspected at next open space

Stuart Kauffman, Santa Fe Institute — The Adjacent Possible (http://edge.org/conversation/the-adjacent-possible)

Coaching Change

Coaching + experimentation => learning can take place

Experiments make a space for learning

Cannot inflict help

Power of Invitation

Pull out of comfort zone rather than push through invitation

Frame it like a party

Let the teams pull changes instead of pushing on them

Play

A lot of work is really serious play

The opposite of work is not play

Solving problems doesn’t have to be heavy process

Open to Failure

Games dissolve tension, make room for love

We like to fail fast, but are uncomfortable with vulnerability

Mandated collaboration is ultimate oxymoron

Unwilling Participants

Reduce commitment by 1/2 until they willing to try

Create opportunities to try, not mandated

Disengagement Epidemic — Pushing Mindset

We pull work in Agile, but routinely push agile without teams consent

Most people unhappy/disengaged with work

Engagement is associated with a sense of control and belonging

Improving Velocity

Great work possible for any team

Make the team the genius instead of hiring geniuses 

Genius Teams — McCarthy Project (http://www.mccarthyshow.com/aboutus/)

Interpersonal Equity

Substantial asset to team productivity

Energy is created in group from history of the group

Creates lasting friendships, strong networks

Dependency, Autonomy and Mastery

Consulting versus Coaching

Explicit boundaries needed

35 years in software development, business owner, facilitator, agile coach

Team and People

technical practices take you so far

Teams that work well together more productive

Learn how a team collaborates by observing

choice of words indicate culture and mindset

Red Flags 

Difference between facilitated and run

meetings should be multidirectional, conversation — purpose, learning

we’re all in this together, how do we all contribute

Facilitation Antipatterns

Gladiator, Benevolent Dictator, Superhero

champion - great deal of responsibility for success or failure

nice people in bad positions

culture of blame, a culture of fault, a culture of heroism 

Role of Coaches

coaches role is teaching

rather than wrong/bad, asking questions

telling is not a good way for influence

balance guidance, question and strong suggestion

take it to the team

Help the Disenfranchised

stickies on the wall

give people tools/ways to democratize the process

Agile Retrospectives  (http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Pragmatic-Programmers-ebook/dp/B00B03SRJW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406827093&sr=1-1&keywords=Agile+Retrospectives)

I don’t know why it works, but it does so I’m going to do it again!

Language Matters

interpretation of behaviors cause problems

communication is a dance

Non-Violent Communication

Crucial Conversations (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071446524?ie=UTF8&tag=athought-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0071446524)

Ask yourself, why would a rational, reasonable, decent human being do that?

Dangerous Words

“can’t” “made” “feel” “should”

Superteams (http://www.amazon.com/Superteams-How-Take-Your-Team/dp/0670921483)

Practice

think about your words

judgements are not feelings

make an effort to make a change

Contact

Doc List https://twitter.com/athought

His Recommending Reading http://www.doclist.me/reading/

Check out his blog (http://www.doclist.me/) for more about patterns and anti patterns

Josh shares how he brought Synchromatics clarity, unity and purpose by analyzing competitors, creating campaigns and dropping distractions. A great show to get an understanding of what a viable strategy looks like, how to create one and the benefits that come with its execution.

Notes From Show

Coaching — help organizations learn

They need to be willing to receive.

Litmus test for willing customers — used a variety over the years, these days openness to use open space to kick off agile adoption

Open Space — authorize people to be great

What does that look like?

1. Theme around agile — what are we solving — needs to be in service to something

“In Service” — businesses are slow to respond to change — service is about solving a problem or improving performance — specific — not just “we want to be better” 

2. Invitational event — willing people show up

Harrison Owen (founder of open space) — bring all the people who are passionate about topic to get movement — developed in the 80s because the best part of conferences is usually the coffee break

Most important part of litmus test is that leadership needs to be on board. Leadership promises to act on feedback created in open space immediately.

“sponsor” — highest authorized person at the meeting — needs to announce intention and openness to act at kick off of open space

How do we keep the best/most passionate/responsible people and prosper in a world of change?

Open Space meeting is “signal event” — things are “shifting” — people open up/change minds

What comes up that can be actioned right away — impediments come up — leadership works on those problems with the people who were involved with the open space. This leads to policy changes, move people around, meetings eliminated, etc

Five years ago, Kaplan was almost entirely waterfall. Over the course of two years, he introduced agile in some pilot projects with good outcomes. These proved the case for an organization wide roll out. To date, all 12 development teams work in agile. Several non-development teams do as well - 8 total including marketing, publishing, and content.

Wendy's Notes From Interview

• After first year of rollouts across development teams, non-tech teams started agile adoption.
• Introduction of agile to complete autonomy varies depending on size and culture of team. Average 3 months non-software teams. “Processes are meant to serve you and not control you.” 
• Identify problems and baseline to improve before adoption and measure improvements as a result. 
• Use of surveys to measure more subtle points such as trust and happiness. Working with team gives the best sense — watching communication, collaboration, etc. 
• Most important questions: is throughput increasing? is team delivering more value?
• Coaches focused on agile roll out and now focused on how can our practices work better to build better products for our customers. 
• Culture shift — upfront planning -> hypothesis and goals with experiments in the marketplace and exercises. How can we deliver most stuff to how can we deliver right stuff
• Less lines of code, value higher.
• Technical debt gets reduced incrementally so value is continually added.

Shifting Culture From Waterfall to Agile

• Provide lightweight formal support mechanism while adopting.
• Weekly meetings with c-suite, 80% of time needed, solves problems team couldn’t solve on own. 3 months, 25% of time, 6 months meeting eliminated. Teams solving all problems on their own. Once in last 2 years, they thought they needed it for a problem, but ended up figuring it out.
• Lots of meetings — wean off naturally because teams were able to resolve issues themselves. “supporting teams until they don’t need support… goal is for teams to be able to solve problems themselves.”
• Opt-in approach — figure out challenges, give it a 3 month try, see how it works and then decide if they want to continue. 20 teams stayed with agile 2 teams opted out. “The ultimate goal is for teams to work well together and deliver most value you can.”

Thoughts on Dogmatic Agile

• Openness to try working differently in different context. Schools of thought that say what works best. “I don’t really care if its ‘agile’ I care if they are able to make good decisions, able to work in an iterative and incremental manner. If there are some things like portfolio management that helps the teams, thats ok. Pick whats right for your org and the context there."
• Balance is key — too much rigidity is bad, no framework or support is bad. 
• Cynefin Framework — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin — being a “chef” with ingredients