All Blog Posts
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History provides lessons for teams. Let’s take the time to explore a few of them.
This post explores patterns that I see resulting from the interaction of ability, demands and support. Let me explicitly state what I mean by those variables –...
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My sister got her kids a little puppy, and they’ve been trying to train it. To live with a dog in the house, you need to teach it not to jump on people, not to poop in the house, to sit on command, and to never, ever, ever chew on the iPad. Never. Good...
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Steve Krug has written a follow up to his usability classic Don’t Make Me Think . The sequel, Rocket Surgery Made Easy , is a terrific, short, concise, fun guide to running simple “hallway” usability tests to improve the usability of your software and...
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“As companies expand, the people within them start to specialize. At such a point, some managers will conclude that they have a ‘keep everyone on the same page’ problem. But often what they actually have is a ‘stop people from meddling when there are...
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The 2010 Executive Council for Software Excellence (ECSE) meeting topics have been announced. They are: January Optimizing for Innovation February Accelerating Organizational Change March Successful Leadership in Software Development April Managing the Release Process May Managing "Core" Development...
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I have rules. You have rules. Teams have rules.
Rules trip up both individuals and teams causing unintended consequences.
We learn rules about such things as what we must do, what we can question, and what we can say.
A rule dictates behavior. But when...
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Do you have a mole undermining the work of your team? Someone who constantly complains privately to any teammate who will listen but refuses to bring that same complaint publicly to the team? Someone whose actions are destroying teamwork?
A mole erodes...
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When you coach another teammate, keep in mind that
what works for you may not work for me.
Let me share an example – a service I offer is coaching people on how to more effectively lead team meetings. Whenever a team is exploring a topic, there...
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How do I define leadership?
Leadership is the ability to adapt the setting so everyone feels empowered to contribute creatively to solving the problems.
Leadership is an ability, meaning a leader has a capacity to do something through talent and skill...
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A reader of our 2008 Classic Mistakes White Paper made the following observation: I work in the Aerospace/Defense industry and have read your article called Software Development's Classic Mistakes 2008 dated July 2008. I am most interested in questioning the results of your most damaging classic...
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Microsoft Careers : “ If you’re looking for a new role where you’ll focus on one of the biggest issues that is top of mind for KT and Steve B in ‘Compete’, build a complete left to right understanding of the subsidiary, have a large amount of executive...
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Workshop
When you are a member of team, what hopes do you have for productivity? My hope is for synergy, by which I mean team productivity that is clearly superior to what the sum of the individual members’ productivity might have been working separately...
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Workshop
A vital task for a successful team is to extend membership to the right people and deny membership to the wrong people. If you add or persist with the wrong people, the team will fail at some level.
Feelings about who is excluded cut deep. Talk...
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Workshop
Does your organization want help analyzing its intergroup dynamics?
Does your team want help diagnosing its own intepersonal dynamics?
Do you want help interpreting the state of your relationships with other members of the organization?
The typical...
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Workshop
Each person has their own personal board of directors. The board members are the parts of ourselves that are constantly interacting inside our head. If your board members constantly bicker and fight, these inner conflicts manifest themselves...
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Workshop
Is your time being wasted in meetings?
For example, you join a problem solving meeting attended by the right six people. But the discussion wanders aimlessly and contributes little to the solution. You feel your time was squandered and wish you...
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Workshop
Kurt Lewin said, “There is nothing so practical as a good theory.” A gift from pioneering family therapist Virginia Satir is a good theory about how people process change.
The Satir Change Model describes the: five major stages of...
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Check out the blog post, What does Quality mean to you?, Obie Fernandez, CEO of Hashrocket, wrote after participating in a workshop I led for his organization.
The workshop was full of energy and fun. I hope to show portions of the video they shot of...
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I lead experiential workshops. Why? You will learn more from an experience than a lecture. And the learning will stick.
Experiential means you participate in simulations rather than sit in a dark room watching a slide show and listening to a lecture....
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Is your desktop backed up? Did you backup that server? Are your backups on a different machine? Do you have offsite backups? All good questions, all best practices. But let’s stop talking about “backups.” Doing a backup is too low a bar. Any experienced...
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The higher someone’s Stack Overflow reputation, the more likely they are to have submitted a CV to Stack Overflow Careers : This is not entirely surprising, of course: the more time someone has invested in Stack Overflow, the more likely they are to Read...
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Astute followers of my blog (Hi, Mom!) will have noticed that all of my previous posts are now attributed to “Anonymous”. Same as my forum responses to date. Why? Well, I accidently deleted myself from the site. “Smooth move, ex-lax,” my mom would tell me if she actually did read my blog. A little background...
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Janice Linden-Reed has launched a new web site to fill what she sees is a gap in the market. Kanban101.com will provide the beginners guide - just the basics and plain language, no frills explanations of all the jargon, terms and mechanisms in Kanban...
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“Like most entrepreneurs, Ryan and I are still learning about how to manage people and teams. And we’re both used to hiring very smart and dedicated people who will get things done to a high standard if you give them some general direction and set them...
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DAVID: Ruth, I think we should buy the ABC software to track trouble tickets and issues.
RUTH: There is no budget for that.
DAVID: But it takes me days to put together the information you want about the state of the product. And without an automated collection...
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