Essential Links in August 2022

Today starts a new era in my life. Yesterday was my last day in the company that I have been in for 22 years. I am grateful for all the experiences, the collaboration, support, direction and the highs and lows. Every company at the end consists of people like you and me. And I was lucky to meet a whole funny bunch of them.

Today, I will start on a new venture. I have got big plans and visions, but for now: Thank you, Vaillant Group.

Nevertheless, the internet is not standing still and awesome people post inspiring stuff and great content. Here are the links for August 2022.

On decision-making

• A lot is written on decision-making (sometimes overcomplicating the matter it seems). However, knowing delegation poker and decision-making method patterns can sometimes pull the plug in analysis-paralysis.
• Why is it bad when some decide for others? And what are potential alternatives to avoid the problems created with decision over people? Johanna Rothman explains the challenge and some solutions.
• Group decision-making is a challenge. Especially if you want to have everybody on board. To get some better understanding on the dynamics and interdependencies in a group, read about the Diamond of Participation.
• Here's an approach on how to use short feedback loops to increase throughput with 3 easy questions.

Strategy, OKR & Co.

• Have you ever drilled your strategy down from top to bottom? Here is the other way round. With Bet Up you move from your operations into the strategic vectors. See how it's done in this post on Bet Up by John Cutler.
• Ship it fast is the credo of many agile organizations. The article explains why shipping fast matters and which system contexts are created by driving things out of the door.
• Heard of First Principles Thinking? Creating a system, where you always, always, always strive for the optimum (remember KAIZEN?) and never accept the status quo. Here's how it works.
• Google is the company known for agility, innovational focus and OKR - now they introduce the simplicity sprint to get back on focus track. Here is how you turn around a 170k employee company - just the same as a 15 people org: Invite them to the chase!
• Jeff Gothelf is the guy to follow when it comes to agility and thought leadership in strategy and product management. In this article he explains the tracking of OKRs.

Tools & Stories

• According to anthropologist Margaret Mead, the first signs of a civilization was not language, imagery, pottery or tools, but a broken bone (This is a beautiful story and restores a little bit of faith into humankind).
• Have a look onto the analytics page for YouTube users and the insights it gives you and how the information is structured.
• A few stories on Tesla, its innovational power and uncommon behavior and how they regularly challenge and top the status quo.
• Value Stream Mapping helps you to understand how the value for your customer is being created. How an outcome comes to be and what contributes to it and what now. It may also tell you ways of improving efficiency, quality or speed of the result.
• Here is a real people's voice AI as voiceover for your videos or whatever. It's absolutely stunning so play around with it for a while.
• Speaking of feedback: Here is a teacher asking his students on how to engage them in a better way. These are the answers. Asking helps.
• Herbert Diess left VW yesterday. For me, he was a role model in Social Media behavior and usage. Here's some background on his story and the way he was using the social media stage.

Hey, thanks for this month. Today's a busy day for me and a new start. Let's see what happens in September.