Voxelwise

Engineering leadership, organizational health, and why smart teams still struggle.

Category: Learning

Delegate the Reading

A small pro tip for building a learning organization.

Many years ago I stopped having enough time to read all the books I wanted to read. It wasn’t just a function of limited spare time. A long day of Zoom meetings during a global pandemic has a tendency to exhaust even the most hardy souls. Watching a TV series I have already watched three times is sometimes a bit easier than engaging in critical thinking.

So, with limited time and limited energy, how do you prioritize your investments?

Easy, you do the same thing you do every day as a leader.

You delegate.

In conversations across my organization you can pretty quickly identify who the curious readers are. These are the folks that see reading as a key element of their career growth and tend to always have a “next book” that they want to read to hone their craft. Once you find these individuals your goal is to buy them tons of books, including a few from your own future reading list.

The benefits of this approach are manifold:

• Voracious readers love getting more books

• It leads to high quality conversations when discussing their book review

• You will know which books are engaging and worth your time

• There are even more high quality conversations once you finish reading the book yourself

Building a learning organization requires investment from everyone. For leaders, it means a monetary investment (buy the books), a time investment (discussing the books), and a hard requirement to remain curious. For direct and indirect reports, it requires an investment of time (read the books), and a commitment to remain engaged with their senior leader.

This method provides huge value in both directions. I never would have stumbled upon Project to Product by Mik Kersten without a recommendation by one of my product managers. On the flip side, I have bought more copies than I can count of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith for members of my org. It’s one of the most common pieces of guidance that I give to rising leaders.

Did you find a particularly good book? Buy it for the whole team. It’s an effective way to signal “this is what resonates, and we should all take a look.”

Have the bookshelf you wish the library had

Create a powerful collection of reference materials that help you understand and explore your craft. Keep building and iterating that collection over time.

I loved the library as a kid. Once a month or so my sister and I would talk our parents into a trip to the Topeka Public Library and we would spend hours browsing the stacks. Anything you were interested in – there was a book for it. I spent a lot of time in the nonfiction area checking out books on things like electronics, weather, and geology. I still remember the excitement of venturing out of the kids section for the first time and walking over to the regular collection. Thousands of new books and an entire new wing of the library to explore.

Fast forward to 2012. I was working as a firmware engineer at the time and happened to be visiting friends in Cambridge, MA. As we wandered around we stopped by the Harvard/MIT Coop bookstore. In the Coop I found one of the most amazing sights for a software engineer: an entire wall of O’Reilly technical books. These are the ones with bright covers and random print animals on the front. There were books for C++, Python, Data Engineering, Flask web services – you name it. In that moment I told my wife “this is the library I wish I had at home”. I bought a book, if only to remember the experience.

Now fast forward to today. Every September my wife and I go to the local book sale fundraiser for Planned Parenthood. Like kids in a candy store, we buy dozens of books every year. As I was shelving my new finds last fall I had to stop for a second. I realized that my collection of software and management books had finally iterated to the point where I very nearly had the perfect bookshelf – the bookshelf I wished the library had.

All my favorite authors. A ton of community favorites. A few stinkers, sure, but this bookshelf has served me well by opening my eyes to new perspectives and new challenges. With each book I have improved my engineering and my management. While most of the books I have finished reading, there are still a number that I haven’t opened up yet. I want the same reference library, and the same benefits, for everyone.

A quick thanks to Planned Parenthood of the California Central Coast for putting on their annual book sale in September. It has always been a treat. Thanks also to my current employer, who graciously gives every employee an enrichment stipend each year for professional growth. I spend it all on books…

Photo: two out of my eight shelves in the home office. Also seen: a dumpster fire plushie, a plastic airplane model, a Highway to the Danger Zone patch, an incomplete 3D print of a tricorder from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and a static light scattering flow cell from my days at Wyatt Technology.