I want to be a better coach and mentor to my staff. I recently took a course offered by employer on emotional intelligence. One thing that came home to me was that it is more powerful to add value to my staff by asking questions than by giving answers. A manager should always be looking…
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Autonomy
Autonomy requires trust. Trust requires accountability. Accountability requires measurement. Measurement requires standards. Standards require preparation. If your manager/company will not invest in preparing meaningful standards – not functional but qualitative and quantitative standards, then all accountability is based on opinion or whim, and trust is based on results and history, and autonomy is unstable, and…
A new pim – part 2
My trial of chandler is a few days old. Overall I like the metaphor. Calendar and task list. Everything has notes. User definable categories. Good stuff. I have not used any of the advanced features yet like group stuff – ‘cuz I am the only one using it. My experience is that it has trouble…
Productivity
I have some bad habits. Most of them cause productivity problems. Most of them derive from my tendency to wear many hats. I tend to be interrupted often. I tend to lose track of tasks that are not accomplished quickly. New tasks displace old tasks. I have been looking for some handles to grab to…
The cynic
It has been oft said that an optimist views the glass as half full, while the pessimist views the glass as half empty. I know engineers who would say that the glass has 2x the required capacity. The cynic is the one looking for the SOB who drilled the hole in the glass at the halfway…
Project hope
I manage project managers. I am not a good project manager, but I know one when I see one. Sometime a project manager will provide a status or answer a status inquiry with the phrase “I hope” followed by some outcome. This almost always leads me to recite the oft quoted aphorism: “Hope is not…
The funny
Where is the funny? Sometimes it’s very hard to find. Humor can help us through difficult circumstances. It can help us cope with impending doom, or overwhelming frustration. It can help us gain perspective when we take ourselves too seriously. It is fun to harpoon and lampoon our shared frustrations – it brings us together.…
longevity
Found coupons for additional dollars off my laptop purchase. Pulled the trigger as I had planned. Laptop should show up in a couple weeks! I am looking for a way to extend the life of my laptop. Because I tend to trial a lot of software – I am subject to rapid registry bloat. This…
Alignment
I had a great conversation with a key client yesterday. We realized that we had been talking about a product release strategy for almost three months, without being aligned. Yet for three months we agreed with each other. When we realized that we did not understand the same things from our discussion, we had a…
Entreprenuership
Today I realized that the entrepreneur in me is stymied by enterprise level bureaucracy I work in. I send 5 ninjas to assassinate Putin and he sends the red army to lay siege to my town. I step on the gas pedal, accepting the risks, while the entire management hierarchy stands on the brakes, so…