Category Archives: Other Thoughts

You’re sick, never mind the details…

As a manager, I occasionally hear variations on the “I’m sick and not coming in today” statement from my employees. Sometimes it’s a simple cold, other times it’s not. Sometimes it comes with much too much information. I’m not sure… (read more)

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Vendors: Superheroes or Villains?

As the lead IT guy in a small engineering firm, I get to deal with a lot of vendors. Vendors fill in my gaps: things like knowledge, skills, tools, hours and expertise. Really good vendors become my partners, my superheroes.… (read more)

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Picard management tip: Used sparingly, some light swearing can help emphasize your damn point. — Picard Tips (@PicardTips) June 9, 2013

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On Walking as a Leadership Trait

One of my favorite leaders during my time at KeyCorp was a walker. He’d catch us early in the morning as he walked around the 6th floor. There were certainly faster or shorter ways to get to his office, but… (read more)

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Be Curious

Unless it’s incessantly coming from the mouth of a two year-old, “why?” is one of my favorite questions. And “how?” is right up there with “why?”—they’re practically cousins. Why? How? Why was it set up this way? How does this work? Why… (read more)

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Slight Deflection

You may notice a slight deflection over the next few months on these pages, not in theme and topic, but in perspective. Nothing major—I’ll still be posting on leadership, management and system administration—but the angle will be slightly different. In… (read more)

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Three top Business skills

Similar to top leadership skills and top management skills, top business skills may depend more on the situation than anything else. So picking three top ones (not the top three ones) remains a risky task but yet one I was… (read more)

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Acting on a good idea

Earlier I mused on suits, haircuts and good ideas and opted to support “what’s between the ears”, those brains, smarts and ability to execute. A day or so later my family were eating Chinese takeout when we got to the… (read more)

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It’s not the haircut, but what’s between the ears

I was at a tech Meetup, talking with an Android developer about how he writes code to handle background processes on that platform when he stopped abruptly and asked me about my work experience. I briefly explained my history in… (read more)

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Top Posts and Commenters for April 2011

In case you missed one or more of these, here are this blog’s top ten posts based on traffic during the month of April 2011. Much to my surprise, the Emacs versus vi post remains on the top. The longest… (read more)

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