Jake tossed and turned. He looked at the bedside clock. 3 AM. "I need sleep," he thought to himself. But sleep would not come. Only worry about tomorrow's meeting. Edmund, Jake's manager's manager, enjoyed probing managers in his organization to discover how well they were doing. He expected his managers to lead people so they wanted to follow. … [Read more...]
Don’t Tell Doreen
Jarrett, Doreen and I were on the verge of a closing a big sale. We had crafted the Statement of Work (SOW) for two weeks and had finally reached the point where it satisfied both the customer's desires and the needs of our company. But at the last second, before the document was sent to the customer, Jarrett, the salesman, decided to reduce the … [Read more...]
Unintentional Lesson
Ever had one of your buttons pushed? During a terrific session at the AYE Conference entitled Software by the Numbers, I discovered a new button of mine. Let's call it the "Planning" button. The objective of the session was to explore the pitfalls of objectively trying to measure creative work. After giving general instructions to everyone, … [Read more...]
Make Results Predictable
Your organization is in chaos. You want to create pockets of stability. What do you do? Make the results of meetings predictable. Winfrey is the manager of a geographically dispersed software development team at the XYZ Corp. Ellsworth, her manager, assigns Winfrey the management responsibility of hosting a biweekly training conference call. … [Read more...]
Go Dark Loudly
The answer is "X has gone dark". The question is "What frustrates me?" I don't like feeling frustrated. As a member a geographic team, I communicate with my teammates by either email or phone. Sometimes teammates go dark—they completely stop communicating. Paul went dark recently. Attempts to contact him by email received no reply, … [Read more...]
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