There’s a great comment to my recent Management Myth: Performance Reviews Are Useful. The writer has these questions, which I have paraphrased: 1. How do bonuses work? Here’s the problem with bonuses in a team-based organization (agile or not). How can you tell who has done which work? Who actually knows who has contributed what?
Part 1 of this is More Interview Questions Not to Ask, Part 1. There are more questions from Interview Questions: Hiring Experts Reveal Their Favorites. I had mixed feelings about these questions. You need to be a savvy interviewer to pull these off: • Describe an environment in which you would not thrive. • So
Three Tips for Becoming a Servant Leader You and I both know that we’re not supposed to boss people around anymore, that we’re supposed to be servant leaders. Well, a client asked me, “What the heck is servant leadership?” When you’re a traditional manager, you might have thought of accumulating people and power. If you
I was reading Interview Questions: Hiring Experts Reveal Their Favorites. Some of them are quite good. But some of them? Not so much. Here are the ones you should avoid, and why: Who do you most admire and why? What is your passion? If you could do anything, what would be your ideal job? Why
I have received some wonderful feedback from some of my managers. Back when I was a young engineer, one of my managers gave me the feedback at an annual review that I didn’t quite finish my projects. “Oh, you mean on the project I just finished last week?” I wanted to know if it was
I will be in London again this spring. Again, I will be offering public workshops. This year, I’ll be offering these workshops: Monday, March 17, 2014: Introduction to Agile Project Management Are you an “agile project manager”? Or, a “Scrum Master with project management responsibilities”? Or, maybe you’re a “Product Owner who is supposed to
As I give my talks about Manage Your Job Search, I ask people, “What traps have you noticed in your job search?” I hear all kinds of things. I’ve addressed a number of them in the book, and I’ll address more of them here. One of the traps I hear a lot is this one:
While I was on vacation in early January, there were two interviews posted on InfoQ: Ben Linders interviewed Esther Derby, Don Gray, and me about the Change Artistry book. I’m really pleased about the way the interview came out. Thanks, Ben! Back at Agile 2013, Shane Hastie interviewed me. The interview is here. We spoke
I had a wonderful time speaking with Cesar Abeid, of pmforthemasses.com. We recordeded a podcast about Manage Your Job Search back in December, that is now available for your listening pleasure. See Your Job Search is a Project. You can tell we both had a great time discussing the book. I’m so excited that Cesar
I’ve met many managers who were in the wrong position. Sometimes, it was the Peter Principle. Sometimes, it’s managers who have been founders or who have been technically great and got promoted into management positions. Because they are so intelligent, and because they do not read about management, they don’t know or don’t care about