This is Johanna Rothman’s October 2025 Pragmatic Manager newsletter. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email. I happened to see a recent review of Practical Ways to Manage Yourself that made me giggle. (I don’t normally read book reviews because once I put the book out into the world, that book is […]
Dan, a Vice President, worries that his teams work more as individuals than as teams. He’s a physically active guy and decided that teams can choose from these activities: a zip line course, a hike up and down a local mountain, or an escape room. But when he suggested these ideas to one of his
Over the past couple of weeks, several potential clients have discussed problems they want to fix: What are the teams doing, at a detailed level? (The managers want to know when the teams will finish certain features in the short term.) How can they plan for six months at a time? (They want to understand
Modern Management: Start with Congruence to Change Your Culture Do you want a more effective organizational culture that delivers more agility? Maybe you’ve tried agile framework for teams or products. While you’ve seen some improvement, you’re not where you thought you’d be. Instead of focusing on practices or team principles, consider changing your culture to
Many organizations ask teams to forecast when the team can deliver a feature. (Or finish a project.) That request often means the teams spend a ton of time forecasting, not delivering. Instead, what if managers told the team when the managers want to make a decision? The team could deliver enough to help the managers
Modern Management: Catch People Succeeding When was the last time someone noticed that you did something great? Too often, we hear plenty about what we did that was wrong. But we have research—and experience—that says when people notice what we do well, we tend to do more of that. Here are two examples. A Team Skills
Modern Management: What Value Do You Offer? Sherry, a VP, was worried. Cliff, a new director, insisted on keeping his “hands in” the code. Now, she realized Cliff focused more on the code than his director role. And he irritated the team because he no longer understood enough of the technical details. Sherry had offered
A Scrum Master asked, “How can I engage my team during a remote retrospective? People tell me things they think we could change. Then, we get into the retro and I know people are looking at their phones, not engaged. Got ideas?” I do. These ideas refer to safety. That’s because teams need safety for
Part 1 was mostly about unintentional plagiarism. Part 2 was about copyright and when to reference other people’s work. Now, you’re pretty sure someone has used your words. You’re not talking about someone scraping your blog for your posts. You really mean Person A has stolen your words and passed those words off as Person
Many of us writers integrate other people’s ideas. Or, we use those ideas as inspiration for our writing. Can we avoid plagiarism and still acknowledge other people’s work the right way? And, if you can, get “credit” for your “thought leadership?” There’s a lot there to unpack. Let’s start with copyright. Start with Your Copyright As