You’re a leader in the organization. And you’re supposed to be at another meeting, that started 15 minutes ago. Your previous meeting ran long, so now you’re late. But the conversation you just had? That conversation prevented a bad product decision. (Or, it prevented a customer meltdown. Or something equally important.) At least, the decisions […]
More of my clients say they want business agility. (That’s a good thing.) Yet, we don’t share a common definition of business agility. My clients mostly discuss their mindset. Mindset might help people, but it’s not sufficient. Instead, let’s consider how to see management’s adaptable and resilient actions. Those actions show that managers change their
Modern Management: Encourage Experiments and Learning How much of your work directly supports the people you lead and serve? How much of your work supports the environment or the culture so the people can be more effective? If you work directly with the people you lead and serve, you work in the business. If you work to
I spoke with Andy Kaufman on his People and Projects Podcast 377. Full disclosure: I met Andy back in 1999 at the Software Development conference. So we’ve known each other for a long time. I subscribe to his podcast because I like the way he interviews guests. He looks beyond the obvious to deeper insights.
Please check out this wide-ranging conversation with Miljan Bajic. The writing workshop we mentioned now has its own page: Free Your Inner Writer & Sell Your Nonfiction Ideas. Enjoy!
Modern Management: Want Valuable Outcomes? Create Overarching Goals Organizations create all kinds of goals: for revenue, for the number of new and retained customers, and when they can release products. Then they cascade the goals “down” to individuals. When we create these individual “goals,” we create outputs. Even when we work with others, those outputs
Some managers wanted to prevent Bad Things from happening in the organization, so they added policies or procedures. Now, these same managers want business agility. However, the policies and procedures increase friction and make it harder to get the Right Things done. It’s time to start removing some of those policies and procedures. The more
Many of us focus on how efficient we can be. Many of our organizations want to maximize our output for every minute and hour of work. However, if we focus on effectiveness first, we create better outcomes for everyone. We don’t waste time working on things that don’t matter. An Example of Moving from Efficiency
I’m struggling to write several posts and I realized I need to define my terms. I keep seeing managers confuse the strategic and tactical. That leads to large and unchangeable roadmaps and a lot of emphasis on predictability. I don’t know how to offer the level of predictability they want for large and unchanging work.
We talk a lot about empowered or self-organizing teams in the agile community. However, I don’t see too many self-organizing or empowered teams at my clients. Not because my clients are stupid—far from it. Everyone does the best job they know how to do. However, every manager’s micromanagement pervades all levels. Instead of talking about