by Esther Derby | Aug 2, 2010 | Collaboration & Teams, Leadership & Management, Systems and Complexity
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,... 
by Esther Derby | Jul 20, 2010 | Collaboration & Teams
Self-organizing teams don’t just organize their work. They make decisions. Not every situation requires facilitation, but when a team faces an important decision, applying facilitation practices saves time and yields better results. A Story… Jason was... by Esther Derby | Jun 11, 2009 | Collaboration & Teams, Leadership & Management
Part of my definition of a successful team is that the members of the team increase their knowledge and capacity as a result of their work on the team. That means that giving the team the opportunity to learn is part of the job. One of challenges I see when managers... by Esther Derby | Mar 7, 2009 | Leadership & Management, Organizational Change, Systems and Complexity
One of the big problems I see in organizations is that managers who want to improve productivity pull the wrong levers. For example, one company I know of decided to improve performance by ranking everyone in the company from 1…n, and firing the bottom 10%. Not... by Esther Derby | Jan 7, 2009 | Leadership & Management
Mark Levison has an interesting post in response to a Scrum Development discussion about “bad apples” on a team.Before applying the label, look for reasons the person might not be performing. There are lots of reasons for a temporary dip in performance....
