This article first appeared on stickyminds.com. Not long ago, I received a call from someone who wanted to hold a retrospective. “Tell me about your goals for the retrospective,” I prompted. The requestor proceeded to describe what amounted to a mini-witch...
I’ve seen retrospectives help teams make major improvements. Yet, each time I talk to a group about retrospectives, someone always tells me, “Retrospectives don’t work.” Why might that be? My inquiries revealed eight common reasons behind...
This article first appeared on Stickyminds.com. Recently, a reader wrote to me with a concern about retrospectives. “We make decisions,” he wrote, “but we don’t have the discipline to carry them out. The team is starting to feel like...
Systems drive behavior. Therefore, if you want to change behavior in an organization you need to understand the factors that influence the current pattern. An Example The managers in an organization have decided that they want the productivity and morale benefits of...
A while back, I sat in on a birds-of-a-feather session on organizational change. The main theme was bemoaning the difficulty changing even mid-sized organizations. When people talk about how hard it is to bring change there’s a tendency to blame: people who...
You’d think that since I’m president of a one-person company, I could change anything in my office in a snap. But a recent incident reminded me that top-down change is always a process. My dog, Miss Pudge, comes to the office with me every day. Until recently, she...
I received an email advertising a workshop for managers, titled “Overcoming a Culture of Entitlement,” last week. Here’s the hook: “When employees feel “entitled,” they resist change, they drag their feet, they’re not accountable, and leaders...
Between Kent Beck’s post on Capital Efficient UI Design and attending a UI conference this week, I’m prompted to write down a few thoughts on incorporating UI design into development iterations. Establish critical design standards at the beginning and work...
If you have ever said to yourself “It couldn’t be X, Y, or Z” when trying to find an exploration, you’ve put options beyond belief. And that hampers problem solving. Let me tell you a little story, a true story. The Facts Some time ago my...
