I just read Zappos is struggling with Holacracy because humans aren’t designed to operate like software. I’m not surprised. That’s because we are humans who work with other human people. I want to talk with people when I want to talk with them, not when some protocol tells me I must. It’s the same problem when […]
Marcus Blankenship and I are conducting a survey of technical managers. If you are or have been a technical manager, please take the survey here: . Oh, and I was so curious about how many female/male managers there were, we had to ask that question. Yes, I said to Marcus, “We have to ask!” He laughed
I’ve been traveling, teaching, speaking and consulting all over the world. I keep encountering managers who talk about the “resources.” They mean people, and they say “resources.” That makes me nuts. I blogged about that in People Are Not Resources. (I have other posts about this, too, but that’s a good one.) I finally determined what
There’s a twitter discussion of what people “should” do in certain situations. One of the participants believes that people “should” want to learn on their own time and work more than 40 hours per week. I believe in learning. I don’t believe in expecting people to work more than 40 hours/week. My experience is that
As more of my clients transition to agile, many of them have a fascinating question: How do I assess who is doing what on my team? When I ask why they want to know, they say it’s all related to reviews, rewards, and general compensation. They are still discussing individual compensation, not team compensation. When
Years ago, I was the expert for two specific products in a small development organization. When it came time for my manager to divide up the work, I always got those products to add features to, or maintain. That was fine for a while, until I got bored. I went to my boss with a request for different work.
I have posted my most recent Pragmatic Manager newsletter on my site. Read Johanna’s 2014 New Years Tips. I have a question for you. I send the newsletter to my subscribers the last week of the year. I call them “this-year” tips. Some people ask me if I mean “the next year”. I don’t because it’s
I once worked in an organization where the senior managers thought they should motivate us, the team members. They decided to have a team competition, complete with prizes. I was working on a difficult software problem with a colleague on another team. We both needed to jointly design our pieces of the product to make
In self-organizing teams, teams remove their own obstacles. It’s a good idea. It can be difficult in practice. In Scrum, the Scrum Master is supposed to facilitate removing the team’s obstacles that the team can’t remove. It’s a good idea. It can be difficult in practice. And, what if you aren’t doing Scrum, or you’re
Sometimes, you just need to get on with the work. You need to give yourself some breathing room so you can think for a while. Here are some tips that will help you tackle the day-to-day management work: Schedule and conduct your one-on-ones. Being a manager means you make room for the people stuff: the