Preface
Managing the human resource
The office environment
The right people
Growing productive teams
Fertile soil
It’s supposed to be fun to work here
Preface
The major problems of systems work are not much technological as sociological.
If a group of peop...
Introduction
The basics of Personal Kanban
Building your first Personal Kanban
My time management is in the league with the freeway
Natural flows
Components of a quality life
Ending our priorities
Strive for improvement
Endgame
Appendix: Personal Kanban ...
About the story
About DevOps
The three ways
The four types of work
The Phoenix Project frames how a core, chronic conflict between Development and IT Operations preordains failure for the entire IT organisation.
About the story
Change definition
A “change” is a...
Meet your team
Work style and preferences
Grow your teammates
Mentoring
Coaching
Sponsoring
Constructing and delivering feedback
Striking a balance
Set clear expectations
Roles and responsibil...
Scene 1: MI6 Headquarters - Q’s Lab
James Bond enters Q’s lab, where Q is working on a new gadget.
Q: Ah, 007, just in time. I have something special for your next mission.
Bond: (smirking) I hope it’s not another exploding pen, Q.
Q: Very funny, Bond. This is a TV, it’s...
Introduction
The framework for Radical Focus
Why we can’t get things done
A path to success
OKR fundamentals
Setting a rhythm of execution
How to hold a meeting to set OKRs for the quarter
The timing for OKRs
...
Fuck off, indeed.
The bottom line is that the UK government is proceeding like a tyrannical authoritarian state. That’s not hyperbole. And the breathtaking scope of their order — being able to secretly snoop, without notice that they even have the capability, not only on...
As a big fan of the Castro app I’m also happy with the performance improvements over the last year under new ownership. I don’t feel like I am missing entire podcasts in my feed any more… been subscribed to over 230 makes it hard to track if one stops publishing or the engin...
Let people go when they are both confident and competent. If they know what they’re doing then you can set goals and get out of the way.
Coach people when they are competent but lack confidence. If they’re good but they don’t know it then support them in fi...
Based on Eric Berne’s theory of Transactional Analysis and his concept of games, but added to the dialogue the idea that drama and games largely stem from an underlying sense of “not okayness.”
The basic idea is simple. How do you tend to feel about yourself? About others? ...
To build an effective new habit, you need five essential components: a reason, a trigger, a micro-habit, effective practice, and a plan.
Taken from the book “The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More and Change the Way You Lead Forever” by Michael Bungay Stanier
A reas...
This Is based on the VIDA way of leadership.
Vision
The objective of a vision is to create a highly desirable future state, one which attracts people to be a part of the endeavour to make it real, and which creates engagement and alignment around the common goal.
The thre...
Listening is a key attribute of a coach, leader, team member and colleague. Consider the feelings of what is being said and not just the words used. Listen to the pauses. Listen to how things people are saying and not just what they are saying.
Dramatic listener
They g...
Unconscious incompetence
The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit. They may deny the usefulness of the skill. The individual must recognize their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill, be...
The Johari window is a technique that helps people better understand their relationship with themselves and others.
In the exercise, subjects pick several adjectives from a list, choosing ones they feel describe their own personality. The subject’s peers then get the same l...
Pronounced mee-see, the basic idea is simple that lists should be complete and of equal footing.
Mece is a tool created by a leading business strategy firm. It stands for Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive, and dictates the relationship of content.
Being good at s...
Notes: Publish this somewhere on the intranet or wiki, so it’s visible to your direct reports/teams. There should be no surprises
Purpose
The primary objective for each team, is to deliver on the strategic roadmap and BAU activity as required by the business and as suc...
Too often, managers shy away from one on one meetings because they don’t know how to structure them or how to have difficult conversations. Plus, it’s easy to cut out meetings that you feel aren’t bringing value. But when executed well, one on ones have the power to signific...
Radical Candor is Caring Personally while Challenging Directly. At its core it is guidance and feedback that is both kind and clear whilst specific and sincere.
What it is not…
Obnoxious Aggression
This is ‘brutal honesty’ - challenging but not caring
Ruinous Empathy
...
What can you do about that?
The essence of this conversation is to work through the four-part structure only asking questions. As soon as you start ‘telling’, offering advice or making suggestion, you have stopped coaching.
Help the person to identify a good goal
Help...
To provide some ‘go to’ questions for sprint reviews. By asking these every sprint, the teams will hopefully realise this and come prepared with answers. We can then move these questions on to more challenging things in the hope of driving out better working practices, bette...
The principles
Stick with the process
The coachee has all the answers
Ownership is with the coachee
You drive the coaching
You create and manage the setting.
Set the scene
Where would you like to sit (gesturing around the space)?
And where would you like m...
Rule 1
Describe the Monkey: the dialogue must not end until appropriate “next moves” have been identified and specified.
Take a meeting for example. How often did it happen that you attended a meeting where you discussed a topic at length but no next steps where formula...
The circle represents your life, the whole of you. The pieces of the pie, or spokes, are the parts of your life: the areas, roles, or aspects of the whole.
The purpose is to help highlight issues or areas of imbalance that need addressing. The Wheel of Life is powerful beca...
Putting words together to give positive feedback is hard! You know the emotions you feel but lack the words.
organize my thoughts, I use the SBIR Framework. This acronym defines the structure of how to deliver positive feedback:
Situation: State the specific si...
Preparation: Clear time. Twice. There will be tension. This is unavoidable. Following these guidelines will help reduce but not eliminate it. Clear time, if possible, some days beforehand to check you have all information you need and to anticipate and prepare for a ...
Please tell me about your life and work. Your answers are completely confidential. Take your time. Go deep. Nothing is out of bounds.
Assess Your Role
What do you love about your work?
What do you wish you could change?
If you were to review your current job descrip...
Monkey management is a structured approach to preventing problems from getting delegated upward. in 1974, William Oncken, Jr., and Donald l. Wass published an article in Harvard Business Review that referred to unsolved problems as ‘monkeys’ and the problem of managers unwit...
Every strategy starts with a set of problems to be solved. The strategy is a set of solutions to those problems. The logic tree branches out as a decomposition of a problem
The output of a logic tree is a diagram, use techniques like the five whys and for each answer create...
