Values

Motivation

The creation of this README is to help me identify and refine my thoughts and values as a leader. It is also to help you understand me better to help us work together.
It is however not meant as a replacement or instruction document to actually get to know each other. So I also invite your feedback for any glaring blind spots that may inevitably show up in my persona over time.

Me, as a Leader

If I do something that negatively impacts my ability to retain you, or that feels more like telling you how to do your job than setting context, you would be doing me a huge favor if you let me know about it, as soon as possible.

On Candor and Honesty

Nokia may require me to not tell you about something, but it cannot require me to lie to you. I bias toward transparency and candor. You can ask anything, either professionally or personally. Most of the time, I’ll answer. Very rarely, I won’t. I’m committed to never lying to you.

How can I help you?

• Provide context. Most of my day is spent on information, decision making, nudging and sharing context/information. I’ll try to push information to you as much as I can but feel free to ask about anything else.
• Provide an outside(ish) perspective. I won’t be working on your project day to day but will be close enough to have informed thoughts.
• Cheer. “I will celebrate your successes”.
• Feedback. Please let me know how else I can help.

How can you help me?

• Be accountable. This is the expectation. Let me know if there is something preventing you from accomplishing this.
• Be open. Feel free to openly reach out for any issue(s) that impedes your work, either professionally or personally. I’ll try my best to help where I can if it is in my area of competence or refer you to the most competent person.
• Disagree with me. The best solutions comes from a healthy level of debate. We need to be able to separate our ideas from our egos. I’ll challenge your ideas with the goal of coming to the best possible solution, I hope you’ll challenge mine.
• Tell me when I screw up. This is very important. I screw up and sometimes don’t notice. I need to know or I’ll likely do it again.
• Communicate. One of my jobs is to provide context. Are you missing some? Let me know and I’ll fill you in or go find out.
• Collaborate. We work as a team to get great things done.

On Feedback

• When/how?

  I don’t believe in storing feedback and then scheduling a time to provide it. If I have feedback to give you I’ll work to provide it as soon as possible, in the moment if I can. It’s unlikely it’ll start with “I have some feedback to give you”. To me there are three dimensions for people to continue to give me feedback:

  • Safety. Unlikelihood of being punished for giving feedback - should be high.
  • Effort. The amount of work in order to give feedback - should be low.
  • Benefit. How likely is it that giving you feedback will materially impact your behavior? - should be high.

  Let me know if I don’t do well on any of these three dimensions.

• More specific?

  If you’d like specific feedback on something let me know! I’m happy to provide an outside perspective.

• What should you do with feedback?

  Consider it, but acting on it is not required. Some of it will be good, and some of it won’t be. Like everything else, please think about each piece critically and decide whether to act on it or not.

If You’re Reporting Directly To Me

• One-to-ones

  • One-to-one meetings build high-quality professional relationships. A steady cadence and regularity are key for these meetings. Please look at these just as the pre-scheduled opportunities we have to talk. Coffee in the cafe, private meeting room, head out for a walk, let me know what works best.
  • It is not a status meeting and the goal of 1:1s is to discuss topics of substance and focus beyond the moment: your personal development plan for career development, team strategy and opportunity, etc. Feel free to come with a topic you’d like to discuss. I’d love it if you spent a few minutes beforehand preparing so that we can get the most of our time.
  • Don’t save urgent matters for a One-to-one!

• Want to Talk? Let’s Talk!

  • If you want to talk with me, feel free to DM me and we’ll chat.
  • Heard a rumour? Need clarification on something? Blocked? I’d love to hear as soon as possible. Come by my desk if we’re at office, stop me in the hall, shoot me a message, we don’t need to wait for our next scheduled 1:1.
  • I do many things here, and very few of them are as important as talking with you if you want to talk with me.

• Your Development

  • Your career is yours. You know best how you’d like to grow and in what areas. I can provide feedback and an outside perspective.
  • I’ll do my best to provide growth and learning opportunities, it’ll be up to you to seize them. Let’s work together on this.
  • At the end of the day, it is your career. You set your goals. You set your priorities. Let me know how I can help you achieve them.

My Quirks

• I am an ambivert. I spend time alone to recharge my batteries. I can sometime be quiet during meetings involving more than ten people, but that does not mean I’m not engaged.
• I commit deliberately. If you want me to commit during a meeting, send me data beforehand as I need time to process new information.
• Don’t push me to commit immediately without context. The worst way to get me to do something is to tell me to do it without explaining the context.
• I’m perceptive of the Dunning-Kruger effect. I’ll try to spot and highlight broad generalizations or when opinions are stated as facts to avoid poor decisions made by high achieving and confident junior members of staff or rash decisions by confident senior managers.