Management and leadership resources : the big list

I often find myself talking to experienced and new managers about things I’ve read or heard. Of course I can never remember everything so this post aims to capture some of my “go-to” resources about management and leadership. This list is naturally skewed towards technical/software leadership but a lot of it crosses over into other domains too.

I’ll update this post as and when I read/listen to new things or remember things I’ve read before!

Books

• Behind Closed Doors – an excellent introductory text for people making their first steps into team leadership.
• Peopleware – hard to believe this is almost 30 years old. So much good advice for all levels of leaders on software projects.
• Management 3.0 – covers a wide range of management topics from an agile perspective.
• Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us – fascinating studies and a strong message (autonomy, mastery, purpose). Also available as a 10 minute video for the time poor.
• To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others – not as well known as Drive but as important in my view.
• Turn the ship around – this works best for senior leaders but everyone will appreciate the brilliance of the Leader-Leader model.
• What did you say? The art of giving and receiving feedback – probably one of the hardest things any manager has to do is give and receive feedback but it’s essential.
• The Servant as Leader – the concept of servant leadership was coined by Greenleaf 45 years ago but it’s as relevant now as it was then. This essay is available as a free pdf.
• Tribal Leadership – another book that senior leaders should read. It’s very easy to follow in its progression through the five stages of tribal culture.
• Five dysfunctions of a team – while the story in this book focuses on a C-suite, the same principles can apply to any leadership team. The model is a good one to diagnose a dysfunctional leadership team.
• The No Asshole Rule – having a civilised workplace would be a given, you’d hope. But, as Bob Sutton shows, that’s not the case. A great case for fixing toxic environments.
• Basically anything listed on the Luna MBA list. This one will keep you going for a long time.

Specific posts/articles

• This 90-Day Plan Turns Engineers into Remarkable Managers – a well structured approach to mentoring new managers.
• “What does a VP of Engineering do, again?” – for those aiming to make it to a role leading leaders, this is a good overview of what that means for an engineering organisation.
• On Managing Developers – another interesting take on what your role is when you’re no longer the engineer.
• The Silent Company Killer – a great description of how bad leadership feels.
• Everyone can be a Leader – this is an important point and makes the distinction between management and leadership.
• What it takes to be a great technical leader – a good list of actions that a good technical lead will do.
• The Kata of leader development – to be read in conjunction with (or after) Turn The Ship Around (see book section, above). Applying the concept of the Improvement Kata.
• Your most important skill: Empathy – we often get lost in the details and forget that we’re all humans with human feelings.
• 5 myths of great workplaces – especially about happy teams and toys being essential. They’re not.
• Growth of human factors in application development – from 1995, this article by Alistair Cockburn describes what was then a novel approach (studying human interaction as part of software development).
• 5 simple ways to bring out the best in your people – they seem simple and common sense. But they’re so easy to let slip.
• Bootstrapping a team (people, purpose & process) – three part series on setting up a new (or changed) team. Practical exercises and tools to get a team through the forming process.
• Developer turned Manager – Great insight from a new manager at StackExchange. Especially focusing on trust as the first thing to do.

Blogs (general)

• Rands – otherwise known as Michael Lopp (currently head of engineering at Pinterest).
• NOOP.nl – the blog of Jurgen Appelo (author of Management 3.0)
• Managing Product Development – Johanna Rothman’s blog covers a wide spectrum of topics of interest to those developing software products.
• Lindsay Holmwood – an engineering manager and organiser of DevOps events from Sydney, Australia.
• Kylie Hunt – wants to be a Chief Happiness Officer and writes about making great workplaces.

Twitter

• Rich Rogers – leads engineering at Hitachi Data Systems. Often posts great articles on engineering leadership.
• Steve Hayes – co-founder of Cogent, agile advocate and provider of great tweets.
• David Marquet – author (see book section, above), former submarine captain and inspiration.
• Bob Sutton – author (see book section, above) and professor at Stanford.
• Dr Jason Fox – expert on motivation and also very amusing.
• Jason Yip – Agile Coach at Spotify; like standing in front of a firehose of interesting content.
• Nigel Dalton – a lot of what I read came directly or indirectly from Nigel.
• Esther Derby – expert on organisations and how they work (or don’t).
• Johanna Rothman – management guru and author.

Podcasts

• Manager Tools – so much content here; particularly the manager tools “basics” series.
• Feel – I have to include this one as it’s mine. Six episodes on culture, motivation, influence and more.

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