Monthly Archives: December 2010

Yes, and . . .

How many times have you said “Yes” to a request, only to regret it later? Many of us like to please our coworkers (and especially our bosses), but always saying “Yes” to a request puts you on the fast-track to… (read more)

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Unexpected Slack

I’m re-reading Tom DeMarco’s Slack again at the moment, this time with the purpose of providing a thorough review for the bookshelf. It’s such a good book, it might take me several entries to get it all covered. Right now, though,… (read more)

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A Charles Dickens Management Lesson

In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a ghost grants Ebenezer Scrooge the chance to look back into his past and see a company holiday party that Fezziwig, his employer at the time, threw one year. Scrooge observes Fezziwig and his… (read more)

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Stages of Team Development

The stages of team development are already well-described in various places and so going into great detail here would serve little purpose. I will, however, provide a brief overview since I think more leaders would benefit from being aware of… (read more)

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Dear Readers:

Management. Leadership. Administration. Hiring (and Firing). Performance reviews. Interviews. Teams (building, growing, leading). Projects. Managing up, Managing “down”. Authority. Responsibility. Communication. Delegation. Career growth. The list goes on and on.

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Getting over the hump

I had lunch with a colleague this past week and the subject of long, large-effort projects came up. Projects with a big “hump” keeping you from finishing easily and quickly. (see graph) He manages a small team of folks who… (read more)

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True Top-Down Org Charts

The traditional top-down org chart has become so standard in today’s corporate America that the first time I posted my alternate version for our team, very few people understood it. Let me describe it for a moment.

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