stdlib

Find resources to solve your technical leadership challenges

Blog Post

Leadership Study Results

A 250-hour study of 190 leaders reveals confidence, strategic thinking, blind-spot awareness, purpose beyond money, and science-based development as the top hurdles and solutions for effective leadership.

rmichaelanderson.com
FeedbackCareer development
Blog Post

Context engineering

Context engineering expands prompt engineering by treating every token in the LLM's context window as a deliberate, structured artifact, enabling reliable, up-to-date, and composable AI-driven decision making.

chrisloy.dev
Decision-makingProcess inefficiencies
Blog Post

Buy vs Build Over Time

Buy vs build choices inevitably become wrong later because context shifts; focus on opportunity cost and make the best decision for today while watching for changing constraints.

blogs.newardassociates.com
Decision-making
Blog Post

Why Your Fall Business Update Is Putting Everyone to Sleep (And How to Fix It)

Stop death-by-slides at fall business updates—try pre-recorded content with Q&A, breakout tasks, museum-style stations, or slideshow karaoke to actually engage your team

daydreamsinruby.com
Meeting effectivenessCommunication
Blog Post

Your Title Is Holding You Back

Your job title is often an excuse that cages impact; the article shows why leaders must stop self-pigeonholing and act beyond their title to earn credibility and advance faster.

avivbenyosef.com
Career development
Blog Post

Top Five Ways to Create Psychological Safety at Work

Psychological safety comes from self-awareness, encouraging failure, open feedback, no blame, and inclusive decisions-five concrete actions leaders can use to make teams feel safe to speak up and experiment.

management30.com
CommunicationBurnout & moraleFeedback
Blog Post

Twin Anxieties of the Engineer/Manager Pendulum

Engineers fearing they'll lose future management chances or rust their technical skills are reassured: once you've managed, you become a prized senior engineer and will be tapped for leadership again, so keep your code fluency to safeguard career options.

charity.wtf
Career developmentBurnout & morale
Blog Post

9 Mistakes to Avoid while creating an Internal Product

Internal products fail when PMs forget they're building a product—you still need stakeholder buy-in, clear value prop, and adoption strategy even when users are other engineers

medium.com
Cross-functional alignmentKnowledge sharingTechnical debtProcess inefficiencies
Blog Post

Feminine Leadership Explained: The 'Masculine' and 'Feminine' Sides of Leadership

Feminine leadership isn't about gender—it's collaboration, empathy, and holistic thinking versus masculine assertiveness and hierarchy. Effective leaders integrate both styles, not pick one.

management30.com
CommunicationBurnout & moraleInnovation
Blog Post

Qualities of a Good Leader

Promoting internal staff succeeds when you assess empathy, listening, accountability, leadership curiosity, and a growth mindset, avoiding costly bad hires and boosting team morale.

getlighthouse.com
CommunicationConflict resolutionCareer development
Blog Post

Do you need a CAIO? The rise of the chief AI officer in 2025

A Chief AI Officer is essential for coordinating AI strategy, governance, and risk across the organization, preventing talent pipeline cuts and ensuring responsible AI adoption.

thenewstack.io
Decision-makingCross-functional alignmentScaling
Blog Post

We ran an experiment to see how easy it is to cheat with ChatGPT in interviews

ChatGPT lets candidates ace verbatim LeetCode questions but struggles with custom problems, proving companies need to replace standard questions with original ones to stop cheating.

interviewing.io
Hiring
Blog Post

From Zero to CTO - Mark Wood is in the Spotlight

Mark Wood shares how proactive, self-started leadership, listening and clear expectations helped him grow from early startups to CTO, offering practical advice on talent, stress, and motivating teams.

medium.com
Career developmentCross-functional alignment
Blog Post

Delegation is an art, not a science

A concrete delegation template that defines a clear goal, focused pro tips, and specific support boundaries, turning hand-offs into leadership development and reducing manager overload.

larahogan.me
Team performanceCommunicationCareer development
Article

Where does your org fit in? Or parts of your org? Or where is there back and forth and movement as you scale?

John Cutler's post argues that teams swing between chaotic abundance and structured bureaucracy, and asks how leaders can nudge toward guided autonomy without falling back into dogma.

linkedin.com
ScalingProcess inefficiencies
Blog Post

How To Manage B Players

B players are the steady engine of teams; leaders who give them autonomy, parallel career paths, and loud recognition keep organizations resilient and high-performing.

davidburkus.com
Team performanceFeedbackCareer development
Blog Post

Managing Stress and Fostering Creativity in Your Startup Team

Balancing stress and creativity is essential for startup teams; the article gives practical tactics-mindfulness, risk-taking culture, open communication, work-life balance, delegation-to keep innovation alive while scaling.

haigmail.com
Burnout & moraleInnovation
Blog Post

Storytelling

Storytelling is a strategic skill for CTOs that lets them align teams, secure buy-in, and convey complex ideas with clear narrative.

ctocraft.com
CommunicationCross-functional alignment
Blog Post

Skip-level meetings

Skip-level meetings let managers of managers talk directly to individual contributors, building trust, surfacing issues, and accelerating career growth without extra bureaucracy.

theengineeringmanager.com
CommunicationFeedback
Blog Post

If You Want People to Remember, Tell a Story

Tie core values to vivid stories such as the 'Message to Garcia' to turn abstract expectations into concrete examples that inspire reliable, question-free execution.

andysparks.co
CommunicationTeam performance
Blog Post

New Leader's First Move: Make Their Life Easier

New leaders win trust faster by asking "What can I help you with?" and tackling annoying, low-level problems before launching big strategies.

makemeacto.substack.com
OnboardingCommunicationTeam performance
Blog Post

What the World's Experts Say: 9 Specific Activities You Should Do to Become an Amazing Manager!

Three expert-derived checklists (Gallup Q12+, Buckingham's 8-question pulse, Google's 9-point list) are compared and turned into actionable manager behaviors that boost engagement, feedback and career growth.

medium.com
Team performanceBurnout & moraleCareer developmentFeedback
Article

What Cooking Taught Me About Management and Leadership

Effective managers treat organizations like a dish, focusing on the interaction of parts rather than optimizing each ingredient, because improving isolated pieces can damage the whole.

linkedin.com
Team performanceCommunicationProcess inefficiencies
Blog Post

You're probably measuring DORA change failure rate wrong

DORA change failure rate measures the share of production changes that cause incidents, and this guide shows how to calculate it correctly while avoiding common mistakes that skew the metric.

swarmia.com
Process inefficienciesDecision-makingTeam performance
Blog Post

Our management doesn't: A Kick in the ScrumBut - Episode 2

Management ignores Scrum principles, leading to misaligned goals and stalled velocity; the article offers concrete steps to get executives onboard and restore true self-organizing teams.

medium.com
CommunicationConflict resolution
Blog Post

Fluid Teams: The Next Evolution of Agile?

Fluid teams let Scrum groups reconfigure each sprint, matching people to the most needed skills to boost resource utilization, innovation, and morale while exposing cohesion and management challenges.

parabol.co
Team performanceCommunicationScaling
Blog Post

4 Steps to Manage a Manager Can't Communicate - Leadership Freak

When managers mumble, talent quits; focus on what you control and use the "I intend to" email method to confirm expectations, create a paper trail, and keep projects moving.

leadershipfreak.blog
CommunicationFeedback
Blog Post

How to lead strategically every day

Lena Reinhard's STABB framework makes strategy a daily habit: 15 minutes before opening your laptop, weekly 30-minute reviews, quarterly strategy checks. The way you spend your time is the kind of leader you are.

lenareinhard.com
Decision-makingTeam performance
Blog Post

Deming's 95/5 Rule

Deming's 95/5 rule argues that 95% of organizational issues stem from flawed systems, not individual performance, urging leaders to focus on process improvement over blame.

flowchainsensei.wordpress.com
Process inefficienciesDecision-making
Blog

The CTO Craft Blog

CTO Craft helps CTOs and engineering leaders sharpen strategic and leadership skills through custom events, coaching, mentoring, and workshops.

ctocraft.com
Team performanceScalingDecision-making
Blog Post

I Tried GitHub Copilot and it's the Best Thing Ever

GitHub Copilot can write functional PHP code, tests, and JWT utilities in minutes, turning a typical coding task from an hour into a few minutes, though occasional tweaks are still needed.

davegebler.com
Team performanceInnovationProcess inefficiencies
Blog Post

Manage a Crisis Without Freaking Out

Effective crisis leadership means staying calm, communicating transparently, and guiding your team with actionable steps to resolve problems quickly.

coach.bunch.ai
CommunicationBurnout & moraleDecision-making
Blog Post

Stephen Bungay and the Art of Leadership

Leadership via intent balances high alignment on goals with autonomy on execution, letting teams act under clear purpose despite uncertainty.

blog.crisp.se
Team performanceCross-functional alignmentDecision-making
Blog Post

Accountability

Accountability works when it pairs clear expectations with psychological safety; fear-based blame destroys performance, while co-created goals, ownership, and transparent feedback drive sustainable results.

fffej.substack.com
Team performanceBurnout & morale
Blog Post

Magic and Mouse House: How Storytelling Completes You as a Leader

Storytelling turns good leaders into great ones by making ideas stick, building trust, and driving action-use the three-act magic of a story to communicate decisions and feedback effectively.

ctocraft.com
CommunicationBurnout & morale
Blog Post

Driving security in a modern digital business

ThoughtWorks introduces a business security maturity model that shifts security from a specialist task to a business value driver, giving leaders a concrete framework to assess and improve security across 18 countries.

thoughtworks.com
Cross-functional alignmentDecision-making
Blog Post

The Craft Of Managing And Leading

Effective managers treat leadership as a craft, blending clear communication, intentional decision-making, and trust-building to turn strategy into results.

forbes.com
Team performanceCareer developmentDecision-making
Blog Post

Back to First Sight

Regain the fresh perspective of a beginner by using constraints, new-employee feedback, and code retreats to spark continuous innovation in mature engineering teams.

avivbenyosef.com
Decision-makingCommunication
Blog Post

Engineering progression

A CTO shares why a clear engineering career ladder matters as companies scale and the common mistakes to avoid when building a progression framework.

pdole.ga
Career developmentScalingFeedback
Blog Post

Incident response programs and your startup

A startup needs a formal incident response program to stay reliable as it scales; the article outlines how to evolve from ad-hoc on-call to a structured, product-focused incident system and avoid the trap of compliance-driven "incident law".

lethain.com
ScalingProcess inefficiencies
Blog Post

Understanding the Manager Role

Being an understanding manager who forgives mistakes creates psychological safety, drives innovation and cuts the cost of toxic culture.

getlighthouse.com
Team performanceCareer developmentFeedback
Article

The great resignation didn't happen in Australia, but the great burnout did

Australian survey shows 33% of prime-aged workers consider quitting, with half feeling exhausted; flexible work emerges as the key solution to combat burnout and boost productivity.

theconversation.com
Burnout & moraleRemote work
Blog Post

Managers Believe Downsizing Is Effective. Research Says: Nope

Research shows downsizing harms productivity and morale; a no-layoff transformation model with self-managing teams delivers better financial results.

corporate-rebels.com
Burnout & moraleDecision-makingProcess inefficiencies
Blog Post

Product Manager vs. Product Owner

Scrum's product owner is a tactical role, but the article shows it's fundamentally a product management position and explains why the title creates confusion across Scrum and SAFe.

romanpichler.com
Decision-makingCross-functional alignment
Article

Dark Patterns: Past, Present, and Future

The requested ACM Queue article could not be accessed, so specific insights are unavailable.

queue.acm.org
Decision-makingCross-functional alignment
Article

How to Spot Fake Consensus in Leadership Meetings

Leaders often mistake silent nods for real decisions; the post reveals how quiet agreement hides dissent and outlines four practical steps to surface true commitment.

linkedin.com
Decision-makingMeeting effectivenessCommunication
Article

How to Be a Good Boss in Trying Times

Good bosses must own hard decisions, show compassion, give predictability, watch their tells, build remote community, ensure psychological safety, and turn crises into opportunities.

gsb.stanford.edu
CommunicationBurnout & morale
Article

Curiosity and Self-Aware Conflict

Curiosity and self-awareness let teams turn conflict into trust, using four signs of good conflict and practical habits to build psychological safety.

infoq.com
Conflict resolutionDecision-making
Showing 385-432 of 1215 resources

Aboutstdlib

The stdlib collection is a community-curated library of practical, immediately useful, battle-tested resources for technical leadership. Each resource is designed to be immediately applicable to your role. New resources are added based on community feedback and emerging best practices.