Fourteen quick links for Sunday afternoon

I’ve been travelling for work and had quite a bit to catch up on (and still do) …

5 Things I Learned About Leadership from the Death & Rebirth of Microsoft. When Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he transformed the company by changing its culture and strategy. He encouraged a growth mindset, made customer-centric decisions, and empowered Microsoft’s engineering teams.

How Good, Kind, Caring People Became The Bad Guys. A phenomenon known as “spontaneous trait transference” leads to people blaming and turning against those who try to warn them about problems or negative situations. I’ve watched first-hand as leaders become increasingly resentful towards those who point out problems. Turns out, it’s a fairly common psychological bias, one that takes deliberate effort to overcome.

Manage for congruence, harmony, and legitimacy. The key to effective organisational change is aligning on vision, problems, and the intention to address them collaboratively, rather than imposing solutions. Leaders should focus on cultivating the capability for collective observation, evaluation, and confrontation of challenges, rather than directly redesigning organizational structures.

The Pac-Man Rule. The Pac-Man Rule states that when standing in a group, you should always leave room for one more person to join the conversation. When someone joins the group, make room for one more. Such a simple way to create space for others to participate.

Seven Years Later: What the Agile Manifesto Left Out. It’s another 13 years since Brian Marick’s talk, and it still resonates with me.

Software Art Thou: Real Engineering. I’ve been watching Glenn Vanderburg iterate on this talk for what must be almost 15 years, and I appreciate it more each time.

Mathematicians Are Excited About a Newly Discovered Shape. A 2D Reuleaux triangle is a shape with a constant width but a smaller area than a circle. Mathematicians have now discovered a 3D equivalent that has a constant width but a smaller volume than a sphere of the same dimension.

What Does A Great Cup Of Coffee Taste Like? I’d pretty much watch anything by James Hoffmann and the production of this particular video is off the charts.

I accidentally created the most powerful Bond theme. I love anything James Bond and I genuinely can’t get enough of reinterpretations and remixes of the theme tune.

Everything you’ve been told about the ‘Chickenpox bomber’ is wrong. Because of course it is. While there’s some truth to the story of mathematician Abraham Wald’s survivability recommendations, many details are incorrect or exaggerated and embellished over time.

Was There A Trojan Horse Hidden In Section 230? A novel lawsuit against Meta argues that Section 230(c)(2)(B) could provide immunity for creators of middleware tools that enable users to restrict access to content on social media platforms.

Blockchain Rasputin over here is mad that moderation exists. Speaking of content moderation, I’m no fan of Jack Dorsey and the title says it all, really.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains The Three-Body Problem. I didn’t know what the three-body problem was until I watched this. If there are less divisive personalities who explain it equally well, please let me know and I’ll gladly share those.

The 10 Shortest Flights in the World. Spoiler: Loganair‘s flight between Westray and Papa Westray is currently the World’s shortest flight, lasting less than 2 minutes on average and covering just 2 miles.