Why subscribe?

Team management is hard.

Good managers are rare.

In most tech organisations, the path to management in R&D is broken.

Over the years, I have been exposed to various types of management styles in a multitude of environments. Scarred Armed by this knowledge and motivated by the perceived and reported123 mediocrity of managers, I curated a list of frameworks, paradigms, adages, and best practices to become a competent manager overseeing technical teams. At TeamCraft, I publish on the following topics:

• Team management—motivating ICs & line managers; managing up

• Communication—radical candour; giving feedback that is constructive, timely, specific, and private

• Conflict resolution—active listening and emotional intelligence

• Alignment—disagree but commit; non-zero-sum thinking

• Reflexivity—not being complicit in creating the conditions you don’t like

• Being a 💩 umbrella—shielding your team(s) from the noise

• Expanded imagination—diversity of thought; Johari window

• Servant leadership—lending credibility (empowerment); others-first

What is my objective?

My goals are twofold:

1. Be extremely complicit in sharing learnings, best practices, frameworks, and paradigms pertaining to [technical] team management

2. Create a community around this topic to further enable the exchange of learnings, ideas, and tips

I believe that number of subscribers etc. in absolute terms are vanity metrics. Having thousands of subscribers but little no engagement, feedback, or discussion is not an enticing thought to me, as it would not be conducive to furthering the aforementioned goals. I rather have a tight-knit audience that cares deeply about contributing to excellence in team management so that we all do it a bit better.

Who am I?

I’m Gökhan. I am a computational social scientist by training. I like contributing to solving technical challenges insofar they address a social need.

I started my Data & AI consultancy Cogentis in 2024. Previously, I was Director of AI & ML at Superside and Head of Data & Analytics at Attest. I am also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the LSE Data Science Institute, where I work at the intersection of social policy and AI ethics. Finally, I am a member of the Quanteda Initiative, a UK non-profit devoted to the promotion of open-source text analysis software.