Career
Help Your Team Succeed By Providing Context, Tools, and Opportunities
In order for your team to succeed, they must be provided with the proper context, tools, and opportunities. Neglecting any one of these three items will stack the odds against your team and keep them from reaching their full potential. Context First, context. Your team needs to be kept in
Agree Now to Disagree Later
When you find yourself disagreeing with someone, you might find you get what you want more often if you focus on what you can agree on first and save what you don't agree on for later in the conversation. Very few arguments occur where both parties take completely
The First Thing You Should Do After A Missed Deadline
There are several different project management levers you can pull when a team member misses a deadline, but there is one that you should always do before anything else. Make a new deadline. Deadlines drive behavior on a project. Most professionals will do their level best to meet project schedules
Innovation and Information
If I have a $5 bill in my pocket and give it to you, then you have +$5 and I have -$5. By definition, your gain in this scenario results in my loss since I no longer have the $5 available to me. This sort of zero-sum [http://en.
Thank You.
> Be hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise. - Dale Carnegie Running a team can be extremely challenging at times. Being responsible for the coordination of human beings resulting in the execution of a product that will be used and purchased by a completely different set of
People
When I was in college, I lived in this old eight-unit apartment complex (for $400/month including electricity) with my roommate who I'd known since high school. We rented this apartment from a sweet old lady named Edith who had us sign a lease saying we'd
How Successful People Manage Goals
I don't particularly care for New Year's resolutions. I think they have been marginalized to the point of being a joke and they have a long history of being completely brushed off by February. That being said, I am a fan of setting goals and have
If Everything is Important, Then Nothing Is
> "If everything is important, then nothing is." ― Patrick Lencioni It seems like every two weeks I end up shifting my focus of self-study from one area to another. One day I'll develop an intense interest in Collective Intelligence [https://github.com/robertgreiner/Recommender], work on
Work Yourself Out of a Job
Some of the best advice that I've received in my career is that whatever job position you find yourself in, you should always be trying to work yourself out of a job. In a nutshell, working yourself out of a job means building up your team in such
Beware The Second System Effect
In The Mythical Man Month [http://www.amazon.com/The-Mythical-Man-Month-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342273346&sr=8-1&keywords=the+mythical+man+month] Fred Brooks discusses the idea of The Second System Effect. The Second System Effect is the tendency for a project