“Sharing Interesting Stuff”: A simple yet powerful management tool

The core idea is simple: each 30-minute bi-weekly session, one person shares a link to an article, video, podcast or any resource they found interesting, along with a few open-ended questions. The other person prepares their thoughts in advance and spends the meeting discussing the content and answering the questions. Roles then flip, ensuring both manager and direct report practice sharing and listening.

At Shipup the practice was introduced by the VP of Engineering to accelerate relationship building beyond standard 1:1s. By requiring the resource to be sent a few days ahead, participants come prepared, which forces them to dig deeper into topics they might otherwise skim. This preparation uncovers hidden knowledge gaps and surfaces useful expertise across the team.

Concrete examples show the format in action: a manager shared "The Code Review Pyramid" and asked whether the model was useful, while a report shared an Intercom video on scaling sustainable engineering processes and questioned how to avoid overload from new processes. These real-world prompts generated concrete discussions about process health, testing phases, and the balance between speed and quality.

The practice delivers multiple side-effects: it creates a low-stakes forum for knowledge sharing, surfaces topics that wouldn't arise in normal sprint retrospectives, and provides a pulse on team concerns about processes or culture. It also works seamlessly in remote settings because it relies only on a shared link and a video call, making it a cheap yet powerful tool for distributed engineering groups.