I published a Pragmatic Manager yesterday to my subscribers. Normally, I let them enjoy the pleasure of being “in-the-know” about what I have to say this month for a while before I post the emails to my site. Read the Pragmatic Manager here: Standup or Handoff. However, I made a Big Mistake in where I […]
I talked about streamlining your problem statement and your job analysis in Part 1. In Part 2, I talked about streamlining your recruiting. This part is about is about phone screens. Love them or hate them, most hiring managers (or someone) do them. But how? My client spent the first 10 minutes talking about the
One of the familiar tensions in management is how you encourage or discourage people from bringing you problems. One of my clients had a favorite saying, “Don’t bring me problems. Bring me solutions.” I could see the problems that saying caused in the organization. He prevented people from bringing him problems until the problems were
You might think this is a political post. It is not. This is about management power and women’s health at first. Then, it’s about employee health. Yesterday, the US Supreme Court decided that a company could withhold contraceptive care from women, based on the company’s owner’s religious beliefs. Hobby Lobby is a privately held corporation.
My client in Part 1, where we talked about streamlining your analysis, was also having trouble finding people. He needed to hire two developers. He just “knew” there was a boom in Boston, and could not hire more people. Well, considering I had just been at a SPIN meeting the night before and met people
Peter, a CTO in a small company, shook his head. I have no idea what I am going to do. My CEO wants me to do everything. But I can’t. I don’t have the staff. We don’t know how to scale the PerfApp. We don’t know how to test the NewApp, because we don’t have
I’m doing a webinar on July 2 about finding a job: Manage Your Job Search Webinar . Here’s the description: Searching for a job is a big, complex, and scary prospect. You don’t have control over the end date, so it’s an emergent project. How do you regain control? By using personal kanban inside one
Have you seen Esther Schindler’s great article yet? Creating High-Performance Virtual Teams of Freelancers and Contractors. Here’s the blurb: Plenty has been written about telecommuting for employees: how to encourage productivity, build a sense of “we’re all in this together,” and the logistics (such as tools and business processes) that streamline a telework lifestyle. But
I spent the day consulting with a client who might sound just like you. He’s a senior manager in a small company. He’s overworked, trying to perform too many roles by himself. Here’s a quick summary of his roles: The CTO Scrum Master for as many as three teams (!) The tool master (he chose
At the Better Software/Agile Development conference a couple of weeks ago, I gave a talk entitled At Least Five Tips for Improving Your Geographically Distributed Agile Team. (That link goes to the slideshare.) If you look at Scott Ambler’s 2011 survey, you can see that his data matches my consulting experience. About half of all