Geeks Who Lead Podcast
Hear the inside stories of the "geeks who lead at scale" - Directors, VPs and CTOs running software engineering orgs at larger companies with 100+ engineers, and interviews with domain experts who can help those leaders to manage their engineering orgs more effectively.
I'm your host - Peter Bell, I've been helping senior engineering leaders to connect with and learn from their peers since 2010!
This podcast is designed for engineering leaders who want to learn the latest good practices from their peers who are way too busy operating to write an article or publish a book!
Running a software engineering org at scale is hard! You need to manage stakeholder expectations, attract and retain top talent, align and structure your org effectively and keep up with the latest processes and tooling. And that's before we even try to make sense of the potential impact of LLMs and GenAI on managing technical teams.
Our podcast and weekly newsletter provide you with access to hard-won wisdom from top engineering leaders and relevant domain experts. Learn more at https://geekswholead.com/
Geeks Who Lead Podcast
10 Mantras for Productive Meetings with Douglas Ferguson
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Now that everyone is working remotely, people are starting to realize how much they took meetings for granted. Our guest this week on CTO Connection is Douglas Ferguson, President of Voltage Control. Voltage Control’s mission is to rid the world of horrible meetings. So how do you transform ineffectual meetings to something of greater value?
Douglas talked to Peter about his 10 mantras for meetings that work. Some include ideas like ‘no purpose, no meeting’ and ‘embrace the child’s mind’. Tune in to learn how to make meetings work for your team.
- [01:34] - Ridding the world of horrible meetings
- [04:29] - Durable decisions
- [08:59] - The 10 meeting mantras
- [09:09] - No purpose, no meeting
- [10:18] - Disagree and commit
- [17:58] - Bring your best self
- [23:08] - Do the work in the meeting
- [26:59] - Foster emotional safety
- [28:09] - Capture room intelligence
- [30:32] - Embrace the child's mind
- [35:45] - Respect everyone's time
- [36:46] - Decide what not to do
- [38:08] - Debrief for durability
- [39:42] - Meeting about meetings
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CTO Connection is where you can learn from the experiences of successful engineering leaders at fast-growth tech startups. Whether you want to learn more about hiring, motivating, or managing an engineering team, if you're technical and manage engineers, the CTO Connection podcast is a great resource for learning from your peers!
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