I was recently interviewed for an article on how managers should handle office romances: Office romance 101: Relationship advice for managers:46% of employees have been involved in an office romance. If you haven’t dealt with this issue yet, you surely will....
A couple of weeks ago, I listened to a very funny story about economic incentives on NPR. (Something funny on economic incentives?!) The story was about an economics professor who decided to use incentives to shape the behavior of his children. He devised an incentive...
What to do when your (so-called) MVP is destroying team productivity. Luke, the manager of the Rev 2.0 team, was walking on eggshells. He’d had another blow up with Shelly, the team architect. He tried to talk to her about the way she had treated the newest...
When managers want to improve financial results, they turn first to trimming costs. This is the logical first place to look if balance sheets are your primary view into how the organization functions. Many cost cutting measures do have an immediate effect on the...
I talk with many managers–and some coaches–who complain that their teams can’t function without a leader. “Leader,” in these conversations, usually means someone who set standards, assigns work, tracks progress, tells people what to do. That is not...
Authors Note: The relationship between an employee and his/her manager determines how long a person stays with a company and to some extent how productive he’ll be while he is there. That relationship also plays a part in stress level,and physical health....
Authors note: A recent blog post on Bob Sutton’s Work Matters reminded me of this little piece I wrote a while ago. A simple thank you can make a difference; appreciation builds good will, and reminds people that they are valued as human beings, not just as CPUs...
I’ve noticed something lately: when people write about collaboration, they discuss facilitated meetings or affinity grouping stickynotes. Well-run meetings that encourage participation and building consensus are certainly valuable. Grouping stickynotes can help...
Questions matter. The questions we ask open one avenue of inquiry, but close others. If we want to change the way we manage, we need to change our questions. And so, here are my slides from my talk at Agile 2010: 14 Essential Questions aimed at refocusing...
Some managers seem to know instinctively how to create trust. But I doubt that managers in low trust groups set out to destroy trust. I suspect that they have learned some bad habits and have some assumptions that subtly (or not so subtly) communicate lack of trust....
Authors note: I wrote this article in 2002. At that time, Agile methods had definitely not crossed the chasm, and many organizations were struggling to obtain customer and user feedback prior to acceptance testing or beta testing. This article describes a...
I’m a big believer in one-on-one meetings on manager-led teams. It’s a way to connect with people, stay in touch with progress, learn about problems early, coach, work on career goals, offer feedback, and more. But if you are the manager for a self-organizing team,...
No one likes to be blamed, so why do we blame each other in the first place? What place does it have in our relationships, and how does it affect our problem-solving abilities? A personal experience with customer disservice to highlight our attraction to assigning...
Samuel Culbert interviewed on NPR. Employee performance reviews should be eliminated, according to UCLA business professor Samuel Culbert. “First, they’re dishonest and fraudulent. And second, they’re just plain bad management,” There’s...
Performance appraisals are ubiquitous. Many people recognize they don’t work very well. However, people have legitimate concerns about maintaining performance without appraisal. A first step is to separate out the many purposes evaluations served in...
(c) 2007-2010 Esther Derby A ScrumMaster recently asked me if he should take over responsibility for year-end performance evaluations since he was closer to the work than the functional manager for the team. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this question, and as...
If you’re a hiring manager, you know that a typical hiring process emphasizes technical skills, functional skills, and industry knowledge. Interpersonal skills are near the bottom of the list, if they make the list at all. However, if you’re hiring for an...
Hiring managers (and HR departments) expend enormous effort finding people with the right skills to fill open positions. But, skills are only half the equation for success. Many years ago, psychologist Kurt Lewin reduced the mysteries of human behavior to this simple...
Managers–like everyone else–need feedback to know how and where to adjust their actions. Managers may receive feedback from their managers. That’s necessary, but not sufficient. In addition to hearing how things look from above, managers need feedback from...
