Create better processes to avoid difficult conversations

Tue, 25 Apr 2017 15:27:03 -0700

The best way to handle difficult conversations is to prevent them from ever starting. The way to prevent them from happening (or at least to keep them less painful) is to have good governance. Governance is the solution to difficult conversations and trolls.

My motto is that you’ve done the best job you can do when you work yourself out of a job. When you have solved the problem, you eliminate the need for anyone to need to work on it again in the future. So the best solution to difficult conversations is one that means we no longer have them. We’ll still have differences of opinion and a need for conversation but hopefully it won’t happen in painful ways. In order for that to happen, you need to have clearly defined ways to bring up new ideas, discuss differences of opinions, to make decisions and to execute on them.

Can your community get too big?

Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:51:36 -0700

Open source software communities, like companies and cities, can come in all sizes. They don’t get too big but they can grow faster than their infrastructure and processes.

Take for comparison, the size of companies and cities. Companies come in sizes from one person LLCs to 100,000 employee megaliths. Cities come in sizes from a single person farm toÂ enormous cities with 10’s of millions. Are some big companies too big for some people? Absolutely. Are big companies good at getting certain types of tasks done? Yes. Some people prefer some companies and small towns (maybe not the same set of people) and some people prefer big cities and large companies (again, maybe not the same set of people.)

Community on Stormy Peters

Create better processes to avoid difficult conversations

Can your community get too big?