Author: Avi Charkham
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The craft
My first job out of college was as an apprentice to a picture framer. It was 25 years ago and in many ways, it has shaped who I am as a professional to this day. When I got my bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1996 I wanted to frame a few of my works.…
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OKR ourselves first
OKRs (or any other focus framework) are treated by leaders like tools instead of the “mindset interfaces” they are. Leaders are looking at the integration of OKRs as an implementation challenge when in fact it is a mindset shift challenge that, like any other mindset shift, starts with leadership by example. There’s a story about…
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Recalculate route
We all want a sense of confidence that we know exactly where we’re going. But if there is one thing I painfully learned in more than 20 years of PMing is that we product people don’t really know 🙁 This need for a sence of confidence in our direction birthed the concept of roadmaps. The…
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12–1
So… 1st 2021 month out of 12 has passed. How many times during Jan did your team manage to impact the goal they’re driving? How many times during Jan were your teams able to point at a release that drove your company metrics? What’s your prediction for Feb? I’m not talking about what you predict…
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The knowing zone vs. the doubting zone
I found that doubt, or the absence of it, is great leading indicator of personal and company growth. When I wake up and my doubts are “not there” or I realise they haven’t been there for a while I know I drifted into my “knowing zone”. The zone where I operate with high levels of…
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Care Bears
Startup founders are expected to create something new and original in this world that often requires a new way of thinking, sometimes a complete human paradigm shift. They are funded to think differently. To be different. The irony is that the second these founders raise the money they find themselves under pressure to lead their…
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Praise vs. Encouragement
Without belief, no change can happen. This is what makes encouraging such an important coaching/leading/parenting skill. But there is a huge difference between praising and encouraging that is overlooked. As a result in many cases, we end up praising (hint: It’s a bit useless) when what we really intended to do was to encourage. What…
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We don’t really understand each other
One of the things that amazed me as I started coaching was the realization of how subjective we humans are. Before I coached I used to be much less curious and humble in the sense that I assumed I know what people meant. So if someone said a sentence like “We really need to create…
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Separating the road from the map
As the rate of change in the world is growing, there is a growing need for truly autonomous teams that can move faster and scale our organization’s “change-velocity”. Autonomous teams need to be led and less managed. They require a direction instead of a directive. They expect trust in their ability to guide us to…
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Have you made yourself redundant yet?
There are multiple reasons why building autonomous teams is challenging for leaders, but there is one aspect of the challenge that we’re ignoring. Regardless of the challenges of building the required trust, frameworks, and processes that foster autonomy, creating autonomous teams is a form of making yourself gradually “redundant”. I suspect that this feeling of…