A reader asked what he could do to inject some life into his sprint retrospectives. He’d been using two questions “What did we do well?” and “What could we do better?” for several sprint retrospectives with the general goal of improving performance. Nothing really...
Diana Larsen pointed me to a recent issue of Fortune: There are lots of interesting observations in the article about what have been unchallenged assumptions about business. I’m particularly interested in the comments on the sort of forced ranking that Jack...
One of the participants in my session (the session Diana and I did together) on Agile Retrospectives at Agile2006 asked how a retrospective differs from a sprint review where the team demonstrates working software.Demonstrating working software to the customer (in...
Johanna has a post about feedback on her blog…based on a feedback practice from our recent Managing One-on-One workshop.In her post, a feedback giver hints and talks all around the situation, rather than respectfully but directly describing the situation and the...
Yesterday I talked to a friend of mine who was disenchanted with work…which is a new development for her. Up until now, she’s been very positive about her work environment. “What happened?” I asked. Turns out that the manager of her group looked at her team and...
Too often, people, including managers, mistake labels or blame for feedback. However, labeling people doesn’t help. Labels don’t improve results, or strengthen relationships. Statements such as, “You’re lazy,” or “You’re too nice,”...
When I teach about feedback, I make a distinction between change-focused feedback, reinforcing feedback, appreciation/gratitude, and encouragement. Feedback is information that we hope will influence future behavior. Change-focused feedback is information about a...
On his consulting blog, Jerry Weinberg says: “Anger, for a consultant, is a costly luxury, and I am by nature somewhat of a cheapskate. By eliminating there-then-them anger, I cut my angry outbursts in half. By noticing my pattern of anger escalation, I dampen...
I found this snippet by Dick Dauphinais of the Herman Group via the Dear Workforce email newsletter: Compensation experts for years have preached that discussions on performance with employees should not be linked to pay discussions, although most companies ignore...
I recently talked to a person who billed himself as a coach. Here’s how he expained what he does: “I explain the obvious to the stupid.” Oh, my. It isn’t very helpful to dismiss the people as stupid. They may not know as much, or have as much...
