I once worked for a manager who thought everyone should bow down and kiss his feet. Okay, I’m not sure if he actually thought that, but that’s how it felt to me. He regularly canceled his one-on-ones with me. He interrupted me when I spoke at meetings. He tried to tell the people in my […]
I’m shopping for furniture for our new house. I need a chair or a sofa for our family room, lights, all kinds of things. I was on Facebook, and there was an ad that looked interesting. I thought, “Should I click?” I clicked anyway. The site wants my email address. I can’t see anything without
Bill popped his head into Jan’s office as he was leaving for the evening. “Jan, do you have a minute? I have to do performance reviews tonight. I was going to drink Scotch and work my way through all of them.” Jan laughed and said, “Sure. Scotch might make you feel good, but it will
Sharon poked her head into Heath’s cubicle. “Hey, Heath, are you done yet with that fix?” Heath turned around. “Sharon, you asked me that less than an hour ago. I’m not done yet.” “Well, I need to know when you will be done. Oh, and I need to know if you’re using the design we
I had a boss who was great at saying, “Terri did this. Jen did that. JR did this other thing.” We all knew who had learned about different areas of the system, who had succeeded at which parts of testing or development or project management. It was great. She didn’t just tell us. Nope, our
On Managing Product Development, I say that feature teams all over the world are fine. But, how do you hire these teams ? One way is to go to that country, hire the first person yourself, and have that person hire the rest. Another way is to hire someone here, wherever here is, and have
If you read my most recent post, Comparing Teams Is Not Useful: Exposing Another Management Myth and the comments, you will see that I rant about the business of normalizing story points for predicting cost or schedule for a program. That led to several comments re SAFe for programs or other frameworks or lifecycles for
There are two sides of this conversation about telecommuting: the employee side and the management side. I hope you stick around for both sides. You can yell at me at the end. Employees: You Owe the Company a Full Day of Work I’ve been thinking since Marissa Meyer’s announcement what I would say about the
“You know, if you want something done, you just have to do it yourself,” Clive muttered as he strode down to his office. Susan looked up from her desk and sighed. She stood, followed Clive down the hall, and knocked on his office door. “What? I’m a little busy right now!” he replied and turned
If you are planning a vacation, read my next management myth, Management Myth #7: I Am too Valuable to Take a Vacation. It doesn’t matter where you are in the organization, you need to take a vacation. And, you need to totally remove yourself from the day-to-day grind when you do. Read it.