Hi! It's me, Joris.It looks like I've linked you here myself. Linking people to a blogpost I wrote is often a bit
akward, especially at work.
I likely shared this blog in an attempt to further a conversation. Usually the post does a better
job at succinctly sharing information
than I could by talking.
In any case, I hope me sharing this post doesn't come across as
humblebragging, that's
really the opposite of what I'm trying to achieve.
Thanks for reading!
13 Things I Believe
3 min read
My short list of guiding principles when leading teams
Inspired by 13 15 Things I Believe by Bob Sutton.
- Integrity above all. Make sure you can always look at yourself in the
mirror. Be truthful to yourself. Don’t
have
hidden agendas.
- Do the right thing. Even if it's hard, even if it means killing your
darlings, even if it makes you look bad. Be courageous: "no guts, no glory".
- Always go all-in. Deeply care about what you do. Be passionate. Apathy
is
your biggest enemy.
- Fail early and often.Indecisiveness is often worse than making a wrong
decision. Take risks, forgive yourself for mistakes, apologize,
adjust, pivot. Shut up, move on.
- Get on track and get out of the way. Show the path, trust people on
execution. Always be on your team's side.
- Assume good intentions. Context and circumstances shape bad reactions
and
outcomes. Don't hate. Never forget there's a human on the other side of the screen.
- Tools matter.Tools shape culture and drive efficiency. Use the right
tools
for your craft. Take human dependencies out of equation if you can.
- Pay it forward.
Be grateful about opportunities and
people. Empower, mentor and grow others as they've done for you.
- Accept ambiguity. It's part of life, remove it where you can, but don’t
let it paralyze you. Don’t use it as an excuse.
- Innovate from the bottom up. Tackle the daily pains first. Know where
you're going, but only as much as
really required to be able to pivot if you're wrong. Execution heavily influences future business strategy,
so
execute well.
- Trust your guts, validate with data. Assume you are right, but build
confidence before execution. 70%
certainty is often enough (see Jeff Bezos’ annual
shareholder
letter - section on High-velocity decision making).
- Quality first. There's too much dilution on quality. Negotiate on
scope,
not
quality. Be a perfectionist.
Know when to stop ("Write
tests. Not too many. Mostly integration.").
- Don't take yourself too seriously.
Life has plenty of challenges already. Banter, have fun, laugh.