by Esther Derby | Dec 9, 2025 | Leadership & Management
When people in your company feel like they can’t speak up, everyone loses. Manager don’t learn about problems until those problems are too big to hide. Managers and teams alike miss out on ideas, different points of view, concerns, and risks. Employees feel less...
by Esther Derby | May 12, 2020 | Leadership & Management, Organizational Change, Systems and Complexity
When I say “work on system,” I mean influencing factors that contribute to patterns of events and interactions in your organization. Making work work better. So, how do you work on the system? Attend to creating an environment where great work is a...
by Esther Derby | Apr 29, 2020 | Leadership & Management
Management by walking around isn’t possible right now. You can’t walk by the team room, sense the buzz, see what’s on the task wall, engage in conversation, ask questions. Casual conversations don’t happen naturally. So how do you, as a dev manager (or line...
by Esther Derby | Mar 30, 2020 | Collaboration & Teams, Leadership & Management
On the first day of widespread work from home brought about by the pandemic, I heard a workplace “expert” talking about the new reality of remote work. “Performance expectations and standards must remain the same as in the office,” he declared. There is so much wrong...
by Esther Derby | May 14, 2012 | Collaboration & Teams, Organizational Change
Improvement requires three factors: Information. People need information about the context and how their work fits into the big picture. They need information from the work so they can self-correct. Without this information, systematic improvement is impossible. A...
