Articles for category: Initiative

November 30, 2015

Greg Thomas

Selling Yourself

This is the last thing anybody wants to do, it’s not easy, its awkward and everyone always worries how they come off. But it’s a necessity to life – especially in technology. Whether it be to an interview, a performance review or meeting someone at a conference for the first time, at some point you are going to have to Sell Yourself… not for the sale… but for the you. Now this not about shilling the product you just spent 8 months working on, no this is about you the person having to show your team, your leader, your peers,

November 22, 2015

Greg Thomas

The True Cost of Failure?

What will happen when you fall on your butt on the ice in front of everyone in attendance? You’ll pick yourself up and start skating again. If that latest code fix breaks the build and blocks everyone else from check-ins? You’ll unwind your check-out, figure out what you did wrong and later build something that won’t block everyone when this happens to someone else? What will you do if that proposal that you spent all of last week’s days and nights putting effort into does not win the bid? Figure out what you did wrong, reach out to the client and

October 18, 2015

Greg Thomas

The Waffle Project

We’ve all been on “that” project, the one that is plagued with problems, the one that you’ve been on for 6 months and you can’t seem to the team motivated on. It’s not a problem with the team or the purpose, somewhere it just waffled into what is today – people are doing things but it’s not really going anywhere.  No one wants to set an end date to walk a way from it, it just keeps going – taking on new features, working through bugs, trudging along. Ask anyone and no one wants to part of the Waffle Project –

October 14, 2015

Greg Thomas

Break out of your Position

It’s amazing to see, even at a young age, how children can get slotted into positions when engaging in recreational sports and how the spirit of competition can easily find it’s way into the decision making process. But you’re good at playing Defence, no one else plays defence like you, so let’s keep you there. Where the child really wants to play Forward because it is something new to them, something they have not done very often and something they want to learn more of – maybe to understand the complete circle of the whole game or maybe because that

September 30, 2015

Greg Thomas

Hiding behind the Busy Work

Your plate is full, there is a ton on it, so where do you start? With the menial garbage?  Yeah, go work on that first, go work on the stuff that is cluttering your plate and keeping you away from the good stuff… it’s work that’s on the periphery that is taking up space in your head and slowing you down. And it’s easy, it makes it look like you are working, but you are really not, you’re hiding – hiding from the work that matters, that will make an impact that will take you to the next stage. But it’s