The Appreciation Gap

Authors note: A recent blog post on Bob Sutton’s Work Matters reminded me of this little piece I wrote a while ago. A simple thank you can make a difference; appreciation builds good will, and reminds people that they are valued as human beings, not just as CPUs...

Manager as Work System Designer: 14 Essential Questions

Questions matter.  The questions we ask open one avenue of inquiry, but close others.  If we want to change the way we manage, we need to change our questions.  And so, here are my slides from my talk at Agile 2010: 14 Essential Questions aimed at refocusing...

For Managers: 8 Ways to Build Trust, 3 to Break It

Some managers seem to know instinctively how to create trust. But I doubt that managers in low trust groups set out to destroy trust. I suspect that they have learned some bad habits and have some assumptions that subtly (or not so subtly) communicate lack of trust....

One-on-One Meetings with Self-organizing Teams

I’m a big believer in one-on-one meetings on manager-led teams. It’s a way to connect with people, stay in touch with progress, learn about problems early, coach, work on career goals, offer feedback, and more. But if you are the manager for a self-organizing team,...

Eliminate Performance Reviews!

Samuel Culbert interviewed on NPR. Employee performance reviews should be eliminated, according to UCLA business professor Samuel Culbert. “First, they’re dishonest and fraudulent. And second, they’re just plain bad management,” There’s...

Managing without Performance Appraisals

Performance appraisals are ubiquitous. Many people recognize they don’t work very well. However, people have legitimate concerns about maintaining performance without appraisal. A first step is to separate out the many purposes evaluations served in...

Bifurcated Concentration of Knowledge Doesn’t Serve

We’ve long lived with the assumption that the people at the top of the organizations are the ones who understand the business.  They understand the market, the product, the customers.  They hold the financial information about how the company makes money and the...

Seven Lessons from a Top-Down Change

You’d think that since I’m president of a one-person company, I could change anything in my office in a snap. But a recent incident reminded me that top-down change is always a process. My dog, Miss Pudge, comes to the office with me every day. Until recently, she...

culture of entitlement, culture of blame

I received an email advertising  a workshop for managers, titled “Overcoming a Culture of Entitlement,”  last week. Here’s the hook: “When employees feel “entitled,” they resist change, they drag their feet, they’re not accountable, and leaders...

Facing Up to the Truth

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act II, Scene 2 The other day I was skimming the Harvard Management Update when a section in bold red print caught my eye: “Why don’t more organizations...

Mary Parker Follett on Leadership

Came across this quote today–seems a propros the discussion of management and leadership. It seems to me that whereas power usually means power-over, the power of some person or group over some other person or group, it is possible to develop the conception of...

it isn’t “either/or”

I’m uncomfortable with the manager vs. leader dichotomy that’s bandied about lately. Most of the time, the conversation is reduced to a sound bite: “Managers do things right, leaders to the right thing” (from a Warren Bennis quote). Cute, but...

When to stand back, when to step in

Part of my definition of a successful team is that the members of the team increase their knowledge and capacity as a result of their work on the team. That means that giving the team the opportunity to learn is part of the job. One of challenges I see when managers...

When there’s disagreement on feedback data

In my previous post, I described a framework for offering feedback on work results and work relationships.Step 2 is Describe behavior or results. Use neutral language and examples. If the person doesn’t recognize himself in the description or agree with the...

Praise Sandwich Tastes Icky, II

Art Petty posted Why I Hate the Praise Sandwich.Praise sandwich, as you recall, involves buttering someone up with a compliment or praise, stating a criticism, and then fluffing them back up with another bit of praise.Sounds icky, too, doesn’t it?Art offers:5...

Year-over-year improvement is what matters

I just heard that a group of people is working on a CMMi-like framework for Agile Product Management. And of course there’s the Agile Maturity Model. And various surveys to assess Agility.”Maturity” and “agility” are the wrong things to...

Visibly Valuable

In these unsettled times, you can spend time worrying about things you can’t control, or you can take action on things that are within your control. Here are 10 things you can do as a developer to make yourself more visibly valuable, which may keep you off the...

Three Pillars of Executive Support

I hear people talk about getting executive support for Agile adoptions (or other organizational changes). But I seldom hear people talk about what that support looks like. It’s more than money and speeches. Want to know how to really help your organization...

Meeting Madness

Seth Godin blogs about Three Kinds of Meetings:There are only three kinds of classic meetings:Information. This is a meeting where attendees are informed about what is happening (with or without their blessing). While there may be a facade of conversation, it’s...

15 Things Bob Sutton Believes

From Bob Sutton’s Work Matters blog:15 THINGS I (Bob Sutton) BELIEVE1. Sometimes the best management is no management at all — first do no harm!2. Indifference is as important as passion.3. In organizational life, you can have influence over others or you...

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