Links for Week 1, 2018

How To Power Down And Find Your #JOMO Flow This Year
Pause. Disconnect. You’re not missing anything, you’re enjoying your life.

10 Product Management Articles You Should Have Read in 2017
Some good nuggets in here…

10 New Principles Of Good Design
Design is an ever-changing field. In a nod to Dieter Rams, Here’s a list of 10 skills designers should strive to have.

UX Research – A dedicated role, or a skill everyone develops? The answer: Yes.
Research can be a skill, or a dedicated role.

Leading Design Research can be a Full Time Job (or not)
At Nasdac, project or organization scale has created the need for dedicated researchers.

Welcome to the Links

From time to time, I stumble across links I like to share. I’ll post these here, weekly, when I have them.

How I Run One-on-Ones

One-on-one meetings with your staff are key to maintaining clear lines of communication and an healthy team culture.

Early-on when building my team, I wasn’t doing one-on-ones. I was busy and the team was small. But soon it became clear these sessions needed to happen—balls getting dropped and miscommunication.

To get started, I booked the first meeting for a full hour. I explain the purpose of the meetings—dedicated time for us to talk about progress, problems, and goals. I quickly went over yearly business goals and team goals then we got down to business at hand. After this first session, we went to 30 minutes and everyone knew what to expect.

Ground Rules

Don’t Cancel the Meeting

This is the number one rule of one-on-ones. This time is sacred. It’s protected. Your team needs to know that even if they didn’t get time to raise a concern earlier, or if the morning standup wasn’t the right place, that they still have this 30 minutes to talk about anything they want.

Maybe nothing happened since the last meeting. Maybe you blow through all your touch-point questions in 5 minutes. That’s fine. Just chat. Your both humans, with similar interests. Build a strong bond with the time remaining.

Just Chat

You don’t have to be all-business, all the time. Be sure to catch up on their life, their sport’s team achievements, adjustment to the city, etc. This means you don’t end early. Fill the time with smiles and building the relationship.

No Computers

I break this rule, but only because I’m making notes or to-do items. Otherwise, my attention is fully fixed on them. This is a small thing, but it makes a huge impact on trust and communication.

Follow Up

Did you assign yourself a task last meeting? Well, did you do it? Did they do theirs? These conversations are to help improve each other and the team. And that means holding each other accountable and doing the things we said we were going to do. Good, sustaining culture doesn’t happen by accident.

Questions To Get Things Started

How’s it going?

General status check, but I don’t accept ‘fine’ as an answer. Dig a bit to make sure you’re getting a real status check. Could be personal or project.

What should change? What should stay the same? What do you want more of?

It’s important you keep a pulse on culture and team satisfaction. Questions like these can start to uncover changes that make impacts.

What's one thing we can change for you to be more effective?

We all strive to be more effective. But as their manager, you can actually make this happen. Listen to your team, remove blockers, watch them flourish.

What 10% thing do you want to work on?

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Let teams solve new problems in their own ways. These small projects can lead to new initiatives, products, and better processes. I only ask my team to limit these projects to one at a time, and it results in something useful for the business.

Types of Nonprofits

There are many types of nonprofits—31 in fact. I find this fascinating.

All are exempt from federal and most state taxes, but each type has different rules for lobbying, tax deductible contributions, etc.. The most common exemption for nonprofits comes from Section 501(c)(3) of the US Government’s Internal Revenue Code, which is why nonprofits are often called ‘501c3’s’.

All the Types of Nonprofit

There is likely a special kind of nonprofit for every type of organization you can think up. But if you don’t see anything you like, go straight to the source. Read the IRS guidelines on the Tax-Exempt Status for Your Organization. Without further ado, here are all the nonprofits as of June 2017:

501(c)(1)
These are corporations organized under Act of Congress, such as Federal Credit Unions.

501(c)(2)
These are holding corporations for exempt organizations; they hold title to the property of an exempt group.

501(c)(3)
This is the most common type of nonprofit. It includes charitable, cruelty prevention, educational, literary, public safety, religious, scientific, and sports organizations.

501(c)(4)
These are civic leagues, social welfare organizations, and local associations of employees that promote community welfare, charitable, education or recreational goals.

501(c)(5)
Labor, agricultural, and horticultural organizations with the goal of improving conditions of work, and to improve products and efficiency.

501(c)(6)
Business leagues, chambers of commerce, real estate boards, etc. that seek to improve business conditions.

501(c)(7)
Social and recreation clubs to promote pleasure, recreation, and social activities.

501(c)(8)
Fraternal beneficiary societies and associations to provide payment of life, sickness, accident, or other benefits to their members.

501(c)(9)
Voluntary employees’ beneficiary associations to provide payment of life, sickness, accident, or other benefits to their members.

501(c)(10)
Domestic Fraternal Societies and Associations, devoting its earnings to charities—specifically not life, sickness, or accident benefits.

501(c)(11)
Teacher's retirement fund associations for retirement benefits.

501(c)(12) Just kidding. There is no longer a 501(c)(12).

501(c)(13)
Cemetery companies, as simple as that.

501(c)(14)
State chartered credit unions and mutual reserve funds.

501(c)(15)
Mutual insurance companies of association that provide insurance to members, typically at a cost.

501(c)(16)
Cooperative organizations to finance crop operations.

501(c)(17)
Supplemental unemployment benefit trust to provide supplemental unemployment compensation benefits.

501(c)(18)
Employee funded pensions created before June 25, 1959.

501(c)(19)
Post or organization of past or present members of the armed forces.

501(c)(20)
Group legal services organizations

501(c)(21)
Black lung trusts funded by coal mine operators

501(c)(22)
Withdrawal liability payment fund to provides funds to meet the liability of employers withdrawing from a multi-employer pension fund.

501(c)(23)
Veterans organization created before 1880.

501(c)(25)
Title holding corporations or trusts with multiple parents, holding title and paying over income from property to 35 or fewer parents or beneficiaries.

501(c)(26)
State-sponsored organization providing health coverage for high-risk individuals.

501(c)(27)
State-sponsored workers’ compensation reinsurance organization to reimburse members for losses under workers’ compensation acts.

501(d)
Religious and apostolic associations for regular business activities and communal religious community.

501(e)
Cooperative hospital service organizations

501(f)
Cooperative service organizations of operating educational organizations, performing collective investment services for educational organizations.

501(k)
Child care organizations, providing care for children.

501(n)
Charitable risk pools, pooling certain insurance risks of 501(c)(3) organizations.

501(a)
Farmers’ cooperative associations, marketing and purchasing for agricultural producers.

No Original Ideas

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live..”
―Henry David Thoreau

There are no original ideas. Only reframes of various inputs and experiences you've had. This is why it's important to keep reading, consuming, doing, talking, exploring. New thoughts are only spurred by new experiences. Inputs drive outputs.

Stay curious. Stay inspired.