integrity

management, MPD

Practice Congruence to Create an Effective Culture

Dan, a CIO, needs the teams to work faster. The customers are moving away from the company’s products. If they can recapture the customers, the company will succeed. If not? Layoffs loom. Dan demands the teams start more work. And he demands they finish the work faster than the teams think they can. Even when

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Modern Management: Use Your Integrity Even if You Fear for Your Job

Modern Management: Use Your Integrity Even if You Fear for Your Job Susan, the Platform Director, was worried about ProductA—still in development. The company received about 75% of its revenue from that one product. Worse, VeryImportantCustomer, VIC, accounted for half of that revenue. And from the demos, Susan could see the teams were not going to

MPD, podcast

Podcast with Joe Krebs on Agile.FM

I had a terrific time with Joe Krebs on his podcast. See Agile FM – Johanna Rothman. We spoke about a number of ideas from the Modern Management Made Easy books: How to recognize and avoid micromanagement What it might mean to engage people at work The kinds of workspaces we need Psychological safety One-on-ones

MPD, podcast

Unfreeze the “Frozen Middle” of Management

I had great fun with Cherie Silas and Alex Kudinov on their podcast, “Keeping Agile Non-Denominational.” Listen to Unfreezing the Frozen Middle. You’ve seen or heard about this problem: Senior leadership says, “Yes we need agility!” The teams say, “Yes, we got the agile goodness here!” And the middle managers? They’re stuck. The current culture

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Three Secrets to Building Your Influence, Part 2, Trust

Three Secrets to Building Your Influence, Part 2, Trust If you want to change anything in your organization, you need to influence at least one other person to succeed. I wrote about competence in Part 1. This part is about trust. How do people trust you? They might expect you to be predictable in two ways:

management, MPD

Think of the People First

I’m not a rabid football fan. I enjoy the game, but I can happily breeze through the fall without realizing which teams are where in the standings. And, when it comes to the college teams, I have no clue. So, when the whole Paterno/Sandusky scandal broke, I first thought, “Oh, Joe Paterno was supposed to

MPD

Further Your Influence Skills: Vancouver & Potsdam

I’m a pragmatic realist. So, in my program management workshop and in my geographically distributed teams workshop, and in a number of my other talks and workshops this year (and next year), I’m talking about influence. Of course, I’m addressing the issue of influence without authority. You never have enough authority to do the job

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