This article at First Round is about Kim Scott who tries to be a good boss. I like the opening with her simple goal:
Create bullshit-free zones where people love their work and working together.
Kim Scott calls the tool she promotes ‘Radical Candor’. It is about caring personally and challenge directly at the same time. It is illustrated in this matrix.
Kim shares some personal stories from Google and explains that radical candor has to be HHIPP: humble, helpful, immediate, in person, and non-personalizing.
The concept is very similar to the thinking of George Kohlrieser laid out in his book ‘Care to Dare’. So if you like Kim’s thinking, I encourage you to read the book from George Kohlrieser.
Both concepts are about balance. You have to do two things that seem to contradict each other. Yet they are are not opposite to each other, but two positive values that can degenerate if done too much or exclusively. Rather than putting this in a 2×2 matrix, I think it is better conceptualized in a value quadrant – see below.
The value quadrant is a concept described by Friedemann Schulz von Thun. I have written about it here.
Over at XING, I collect and share interesting posts regarding product management.
This article was my favorite from last week.
