I was talking with a new manager recently, and she was explaining what she had to tell a new employee (a co-op, but an employee). “I told him he had to be here by 9am every day he works. He can eat lunch from 12 to 1, and then he should be back at his […]
Read Eric Sink’s Exception Handling in Running a Business. He says: In entrepreneurship, there is no substitute for good judgment. I would modify that to “In management, there is no substitute for good judgment.”
If you haven’t yet read Esther’s Promises Involve Self, Other, and Context, do so. Here’s a single quote I like: There’s another part of integrity that involves cleaning up your own messes. Cleaning up the messes you create is difficult and necessary.
In Integrity is the Most Important Requirement in a Manager, I talked about integrity as a requirement for a manager. With the current Patriots scandal, I’m wondering what Belichick was thinking. I don’t claim to know everything about football. I enjoy watching the games. I enjoy seeing a team come together, which is what the
George Dinwiddie pointed me to this great column, Fired With Enthusiasm. I have a talk that I’ve given at a bunch of Software Development conferences, called “Successful Software Management: X Lessons Learned,” where X started at 8, and is now up to 16. Lesson # 11 is “Fire People Who Can’t Do the Work.” I
A number of my clients and colleagues are struggling with the problem of bringing people into their organizations. In Hiring the Best …, I recommend the buddy system for bringing people on. I wrote a little article, How2 Create a Buddy (Informal Mentoring) Program. But maybe you didn’t know that, or can’t figure out how
A colleague asked how to deal with this situation. “It’s clear Brad is being a jerk. I’m working with him on how to be less of a jerk. But Susie asked me today when I’m going to do something about the problem–nothing she says seems to make a dent in his behavior. What can I
I facilitated a management problem-solving session at the STARWest conference yesterday. When I was debriefing the activities, one participant said he’s met a bunch of testers and test managers who had a “siege” mentality. He was surprised by that. I’m still surprised when I meet people like that. I sometimes see developers who feel
I read RadioShack employees get pink slip via e-mail and at first thought I must have read it wrong. I was stunned to think that anyone would think an email notification of a layoff was acceptable. What were the managers thinking?
A couple of weeks ago at our Managing One-on-One workshop, Esther and I were teaching about how to give feedback. Here’s the “recipe”: Create an opening to deliver feedback. Describe the behavior or result in a way the person can hear. State the impact using “I” language. Make a request for changed behavior. When