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? […]
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’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
“It’s time for our annual management meeting to rank everyone in engineering,” Don, the VP started to explain to his three directors. “Hold on a minute,” interrupted Dave, the development director. “We didn’t do this last year, because we explained we can’t be objective and it makes no sense. We thought we eliminated this nonsense.”
I had an email conversation with a colleague about when you let people fail versus when you rescue them—how you nurture leadership. The context is with people who are new to management, or new to a particular piece of work in a project. If you’re agile, I say you pair these people and be done
At Agile 2012, Lisamarie Babik and I led an experiential workshop called Building a Team Through Feedback. We didn’t have slides; we had a first draft of an article as our handout. We worked on that article, and now we have a real article, Building a Team Through Feedback as our output. I had a
By Lisamarie Babik, and Johanna Rothman – October 23, 2012 If you walk through a high-performing agile team space, you’ll hear a buzz about the product: “Do you see this?” “Bump that.” “Ah ha!” “Tell me more about what you want.” “But that is part of the acceptance criteria.” “We should do it this way.”
“Everyone is worth saving. Everyone is worth saving.” Jimmy was muttering under his breath as he walked into my office. “Hi, Steve. I’m here for our one-on-one. I have a real problem.” “OK, let’s hear it.” “Frieda is a problem in my group.” “Jimmy, we have discussed Frieda before. I thought you were going to
Have you been in a position where you–or your manager–wanted to save a difficult employee? Maybe you felt as if you bent over backwards to save an employee? Don’t do it. In this myth, Management Myth #6, I Can Save Everyone, I confront the myth that every employee somehow has a place at every organization.
I have another management myth, this one about ranking systems posted up at Techwell. This one, We Can and Must Have an Objective Ranking System, I suspect will generate much discussion. Be my guest!