I’ve been thinking a lot about the style of leadership that’s needed with self-organizing teams, and how it’s different from traditional top-down models. I think this captures the contrast: Hierarchical LeadershipFacilitative Leadership AssumesTop...
I came across Robert Sutton’s article, Nasty People via Johanna’s Hiring Technical People blog. Sutton reiterates the costs of tolerating abusive behavior in the workplace and poses three strategies to keep the workplace a jerk-free zone: Avoid hiring...
One of the promises of all the agile methods is frequent feedback about the state of the project and the product. With frequent feedback, we can adjust our actions and goals based on the current reality and manage empirically. Sounds good, but the practice isn’t...
Last year, a friend of mine was caught up in a corporate re-organization. The company president brought in a new guy to get costs under control and improve profits. Let’s call my friend Lori and the new guy Len.Len was a very bottom line kind of guy and he took...
Michael Harmer (via Clarke Ching) has two posts that illustrate Jerry Weinberg’s idea that “quality is value to some person.” When customer priorities aren’t explicit, developers will (naturally enough) fill in the blanks based on their own...
[rant]Last week I heard someone espousing a new form of project review called a Retrospective. Here’s what she advised:Anonymous feedback via survey or questionnaireRanking of questionnaire resultsFunctional groups discussing questionnaire results in...
I’ve been thinking a lot about two conversations I had about bosses. Both of women I talked to were experienced managers in a software organization. The first woman, Susan, has a reputation as a solid manager who produces results. She’s spent the last 10...
Once upon a time I worked for a large corporation. One of the managers there prided herself on being on the go. She was a constant whirlwind and ran between meetings (literally). She felt busy and important.If effective management were measured by busy-ness, she would...
In response to my post on shared commitment, Effern posted this comment: …”leaving early when everyone was made to work OT is a fantastic way to bring down team morale.” Effern’s comment got me thinking. I suspect that the low morale...
I’m back from Austria (with a side trip to Budapest — many thanks to Istvan Fay for showing us the highlights of Buda). It was a fabulous trip! I’ll be posting bits as I sort through and integrate.I was stuck by something Diana Larsen said in her...
A while back I did some work for a company that prided itself on being a “process organization.” One of directors was particularly remarkable. He was receiving an average of 130 pages a month related to problems in the production systems. That was after...
I ran into some of my rules last week… you know…. rules like “I must always be able to think of a solution when someone asks me for help.” Obviously that’s not possible, but rules don’t work that way. Most of our rules were cemented...
Yesterday I came across an article by Stever Robbins on the HBS site that talks about handling strong emotions at work. Progress!I wrote a little piece for stickyminds a while ago, First Things First. My premise was (and is) that believing emotions have no place at...
I came across this post on Brian Marick’s blog: In his second post, Jonathan [Kohl] quotes James Bach: “… testers are critical thinkers — and critical thinkers are disruptive.” I don’t think that need always be true. One can be a...
I’ve talked to a bunch of people lately who tell me they are doing iterative development. When start asking questions, it sound more like they’re doing something between iterative development (as I think of it) and waterfall: All the requirements are done...
From Fast Company, Elizabeth Pagano offers a handful of reasons that managers avoid having conversations with employees about performance:”Eleven Things We Tell Ourselves to Avoid Giving Bad News.”I don’t think she can handle it. I’ll hurt his...
I came across Joyce Wycoff’s site this morning. She’s got a couple of riffs on phrases that shut down thinking. You’ve probably heard most of them… Yes, but….We tried it last year.It’s not in the budget.It won’t work.Management won’t buy...
Back in January, I posted a bit about management behavior that drives people out the door. Managers don’t have a lock on jerk behavior. Just look at this thread on Ask Joel. There’s a lot of energy there.I am particularly struck by a couple of people...
I recently heard two stories involving managers who hired friends. Both had bad endings.In one case, a senior manager, Becca, filled her staff with people she’d known for years and considered friends. Several of her friends floundered in the new jobs. Becca...
Phil Stubbington (a good guy), pithily describes Best Practices on the AYE Conference wiki:Best PracticeA completely fatuous concept based on two dangerous assumptions:- a) someone else knows what’s best for you b) you don’t have to think about your...
