Month: August 2015

August 20, 2015

Greg Thomas

Goals and Craptivity

I’m learning to draw. It’s hard, I’m not very good at it, it is taking a ton of effort. I have a goal of trying to do 30 minutes per day to hit that as an achievement.  What I draw in the space of that 30 minutes is totally up to me.  But when you are not very good at something and you are literally starting at Ground Zero – it can take a significant amount of motivation to put youself into the chair and do it.  I’ve purchased some books and watch a lot of web tutorials – lots

August 19, 2015

Greg Thomas

Not giving Feedback is a Cop-Out

So what do you think? Is this what you want? Am I on the right track? Tough questions when via email, chat, voice or more importantly standing right in front of you asking you face-to-face. If you are in the business of constantly being asked for feedback by your peers or direct reports than you should check out this piece written by Seth Godin on giving feedback.  It provides a great set of guidelines and suggestions on how to provide feedback to people on projects they are working on. Having lived and breathed a lot of this over the past

August 17, 2015

Greg Thomas

Shifting Down a Gear

On a recent vacation, I had the pleasure of driving through an incredible Canadian Landmark in Cape Breton – The Chabot Trail.  If you’ve never been, it’s an amazing drive going from 0 to 500 metres elevation with an incredible view of the ocean. It can also be, at times, incredibly nerve-wracking and white-knuckling as you maneuver yourself up and down the tight mountain turns.  As we were doing so, we were relying mostly on our brakes, speed up to get over, brake on the down.  Well near the tail end of the journey our brake calipre seized and we

August 14, 2015

Greg Thomas

You can’t Handle the Ownership

Sounds cliched right?  Well it is. I am constantly amazed by the paradigm shift in some people’s contribution to a problem when they are the tasked as the owner of it vs when they are now a bystander looking in, i.e., part of the gallery. Sure being the owner of a problem, a particularly critical one, is not always fun, but it is work that has to be done and someone needs to take the lead and own it.  I’ve seen time and time again people wilt under this ownership, not wanting to offer up any ideas or solutions to

August 13, 2015

Greg Thomas

The Customer Trip

I’ve written about this before, in other places, but it bears mentioning again in case you have forgotten. When it’s a visit to a customer site to address any of the following; Release a new patch or version of your software. Demo the latest vaporware your company is putting together. Meet with end-users to identify their requirements. Present your roadmap for the next year. Train the users on how to implement Feature X. Troubleshoot problems with the interop between your software and their environment. Or any other task for that matter, the results should always be the same, you should always, always,

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