As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a fan of Management by Walking Around. One time, when I was a manager, I was wandering around doing my management thing and I was sitting at a desk with an engineer who was working on a project. As they showed me what they were doing, I realized the solution they […]
I remember one time, I was in the breakroom getting a cup of coffee. The counter seemed kind of dirty so I grabbed a handful of paper towels and wiped the counter down. As I was leaving the breakroom, a cup of coffee in hand, another person passed me entering the now-empty breakroom. I heard […]
Sometimes, you have to work with people that aren’t nice, that are just really, really hard to work with. I try to be self-aware enough to know that it is frequently me. I’m not always an easy person to get along with. I used to be really bad at interrupting people so I got in […]
In the past, I’ve studied and attended training specifically for systems engineering and project management, and in both cases, I was struck by an interesting concept, which is that many of the challenges faced by these two roles and disciplines don’t really have good solutions. This ended up being something I encountered again and again in my roles […]
So I was watching a documentary the other day, it was about some celebrity traveling the world and researching some topic. It was interesting stuff, a legit topic, but there were several moments where this celebrity and their friends, I was thinking, “Man, they just live in a bubble, don’t they? Completely out of touch.” […]
I’ve been reading a pretty good book lately, it’s the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It’s a really good book, not dry or textbook-y at all. Mr. Carnegie keeps the reader engaged with lots of anecdotes and stories about real life people. I highly encourage this book for anyone, […]
All last week I was out of the office on a business trip. Now usually when I travel like this, I basically write off the week as not really getting anything done. Instead I focus on what I’m traveling for, then just plan on catching up when I return to my desk. But this week […]
Let’s face it, if you’re in any sort of business today, you’re in the technology business. Whether you think it or not, technology is critical to your business. Information technology, software, social media marketing, business to business integration, it’s all technology. If that’s true, then we are all faced with a dilemma. Tech is an […]
Who really likes meetings? I mean, I’m sure some people do, somewhere. But it seems like a lot of people don’t. So many don’t, in fact, that Scrum and Sprints are designed to minimize meetings. But let’s look at the Agile Manifesto. It says, “We favor…” Individuals and interactions Customer collaboration Responding to change In […]
Knuggets of Knowledge 