Diversity & Inclusion

Pivoting From a Utility to Entertainment App

A PM at a startup was tasked with increasing customer engagement and activation. They proposed a new strategy of using push notifications to increase engagement, but faced skepticism from influential stakeholders. After gathering data and presenting it to the stakeholders, they were able to increase activation from 20 to 60 percent. The PM learned the importance of understanding what motivates and influences people, as well as the importance of looking at data and being open-minded when proposing new strategies.

Building Trust With a New Team

This article discusses the challenges of building trust with a new team in a remote context. The author outlines several actions they took to build trust, such as arranging regular one-on-ones, creating a supportive environment, recognizing team members' efforts, and shielding the team from external requests. The article also highlights the importance of investing in relationships and understanding how team members prefer to receive recognition.

Running Distributed Teams: A Human Connection Is Vital

When working with distributed teams, communication and cultural differences must be taken into account. Video calling has improved communication, but face-to-face meetings are still important for building trust and relationships. To ensure teams are in sync, it is important to prioritize tasks, over-communicate goals, and build relationships with team members. Investing time in building relationships will pay dividends in the long run and will help to eliminate miscommunication.

Nurturing the Well-Being of Isolated Employees Working Remotely

When the pandemic hit, the manager of a gig-based company noticed that some of his employees were struggling to stay engaged. To solve this, he implemented Zoom meetings, increased his frequency of one-on-ones, and held virtual happy hours and trivia nights. He also took it upon himself to proactively reach out to his employees to ensure that they were okay both at work and in their personal lives. This showed that in order to keep employees engaged while working remotely, it is up to the manager to stay engaged with them.

Starting an Engineering Blog

This article discusses the actions taken by two companies to create more credibility among developers and introduce themselves to potential candidates. These actions included creating a blog, targeting roughly one blog entry per month, and brainstorming and writing introductory posts about the company and its engineering challenges. The article also outlines the lessons learned from this experience, such as the importance of planning and editing schedules, offering editing services, and using the blog to attract customers. Finally, the blog is a great way to store knowledge and save time with potential candidates.

Writing a Manager’s User Manual

The manager has adopted the practice of creating a manager's user manual to document how to best work with them. They found a template online and included sections on their view of success, communication style, potential annoyances, trust-building factors, strengths and weaknesses, expectations for direct reports, one-on-one meetings, preferred channels of communication, and feedback preferences. The manual has evolved over time based on feedback and experiences, and it is kept on their internal company profile for easy access. The manager has found that the manual helps new colleagues come prepared to meetings and has improved their communication and relationships with their team.