A manager said to me, “I’m responsible for this department of people.” I asked, “What does that mean?” He said, “I’m responsible for managing the people. I also define the products and what the people need to deliver.” I said, “That seems like a lot of work.” He nodded. “I’m exhausted. I work all the […]
Someone asks you for information and you don’t know the answer. Maybe a senior manager asks, “When can the customers expect this particular feature?” Or your manager asks, “How does this specific architecture work for our product?” A colleague or a person you serve asks, “Why are we doing this?” You might freeze and not
Three Practical Tips to Create Your New Normal I’m thrilled that the vaccine rollout has started. (I received my first shot already.) That means we can start to think about our “new normal.” Instead of considering a return to working exactly the way you were before the pandemic, consider these three ideas to create an
I had a terrific time with Chris Williams on his Badass Agile podcast. We discussed the Modern Management Made Easy books. (Let me just say, I love the fact that I can now say I am a Badass. Hehehe.) We had a terrific discussion. Some of the topics we covered: Are managers born or made?
At a recent talk about the Career Ladder posts, someone asked this question: Can managers pair effectively? That’s a great question. Some managers job-share. However, they don’t work simultaneously on the work. One person works for a couple of days. That person then hands off work to the other person. The handoff might work in
You want business agility. The teams have worked hard to change how they work. And you realize your current career ladder isn’t working for you—or the people you serve. The people and teams continue to experiment with agile behaviors. You would like more lateral, not just vertical options to support any person’s growth. What can
As people gain experience, they often want new and different responsibilities. In a typical career ladder (Part 1), they had one direction: up. That often creates a problem: great technical people become insufficient managers. Let’s not blame these people—many of them didn’t want to become managers However, if people want more responsibility, the career ladder
Part 1 discussed a typical career ladder. I said that when we focus on individual achievements and deliverables, we ignore the agile system of work. Worse, when we reward individual achievements we prevent an agile culture. That’s because agile teams learn together as they create the product. We need career ladders that reward working together.
As I’ve been speaking about the Modern Management Made Easy books, people ask these questions: We’re pretty good with our agile approach. It’s time for performance reviews. How do we reward someone based on individual work when we want teams to work together? What do we do? Can we extend whatever that is to our
On the Maintainable podcast, Robby Russell often interviews people about technical issues. Not this time! We discussed the Modern Management Made Easy books among other topics: A little about the origins of agile approaches The issue of “too many meetings” and why they might need to be called something else. (See Decide When You Need