The best conversations you are being paid to have 💎 Issue #77
Plus: strategy and influence on your job, and finding someone who doesn't want to be found.
Happy Friday👋
What’s up? ☕
I recently discovered something that I get immense pleasure out of and still get paid to do it. I mean, I was always paid to do it, it’s just it’s not part of any job description that I know of.
It’s one of those things I just never thought that it was an activity you would do like this or that it had meaningful benefits.
I’m talking about having conversations with one of your colleagues without topic or duration.
To be clear, I’ve been having 1:1 with managers for a long time and I talk with people like a normal human being. But those have either fixed duration, a subject, or a hierarchical relationship in the middle.
What I understood is there is power in scheduling a conversation with someone without the pressure of subject or time. It’s like going to watch a movie by your favorite director: you know you’re in for a good time, you can get in the right frame of mind, and you don’t know how long it will take or what will happen in the story.
The conversations are all very different as you would expect, but they all get you what you paid for and why they pay you for: you get closer to your teammates by coming out of the conversation with a better understanding of what makes both of you tick.
There is a layer of sharing that you never get at the water cooler or between interruptions and complex tasks. You need time to navigate to the bottom of things, or at least, until new known bottoms of things. That’s why these conversations need some extra care and commitment. But like a good podcast, they always leave me wanting the next episode.
And companies should wish more of these internal, unrecorded, unproductive “podcasts” happen. I wonder though, how companies might foster these close encounters in any organic way. After all, what are the products that you develop that are improved by having weaker relationships in the team? Or by not knowing the people you work with? What they have been excited about? What’s their chili recipe? Even what’s binge-worthy on the streaming service of choice.
Maybe we are not doing what we are paid for when we don’t create these conversations.
And now, the best things I found on the Internet this week.
New to me 💡
How to think strategically in your job | 6 min read
🚧 I came for the strategy but stayed for the Chesterton’s Fence. What a lovely framework to consider before making obvious changes.
⚙️ In short, to add a strategic layer to your thinking experiment with coming up with solutions for your boss problems (different than yours), acknowledge what you don’t know or that you probably have to decide with an incomplete picture (and adjust for that), and perhaps most importantly, don’t forget to do your job, that thing that actually supports the strategy.
How to influence without authority | 10 min read
🔭 An interesting perspective into Atlassian culture and the three roles defined to tackle different challenges where you might want to affect change without the explicit authority for it.
3️⃣ “Psychologist: Understand the motivations and context of who you’re trying to influence & then working backwards to reach an outcome. Pitcher: Constantly exploring and trying different ways of framing ideas that you want to influence. Activist: Creating large movements by regularly sharing stories, perspectives and facts.”
The Driver is Red | 14 min watch
🕵️♂️ A Mossad agent is sent to Argentina to find a top-rank, holocaust organizer, fugitive Nazi. It's that riveting.
Please help me grow this newsletter! I’d love if you shared it with your more curious friends.
A most inflated tweet 🗺️
This week in a gif 🥘
High note ⚡
This issue cover picture comes from here.
Last issue most clicked link was We Went to a Parisian Sex Club for Swingers So You Don’t Have To.
I hope you enjoyed these last minutes as much as me putting this together.
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Until next week,
Filipe