Articles for category: Initiative

October 10, 2024

Greg Thomas

The Elements of your Work People Love

What do people love about the work you do? Have you ever asked them or are you coming up with that list on your own? Ask them. What do you like about what I do? This isn’t about you getting validation for what you do or feeling “awesome” about yourself (although it is an awesome side effect). It is about you hearing what people like (maybe asking what they don’t like) and realizing where your potential talents truly lie. Yes, you are a great developer, but your ability to lead teams and disseminate requirements is what we LOVE about what

October 9, 2024

Greg Thomas

That Neverending Noise

Over the summer I had an office flood followed by construction going on outside my window. The home office was no better with roadwork being done. I couldn’t stop the flood. I wasn’t about to tell me not to do work on their house or on a building I don’t own. But I did go buy some amazing noise-canceling headphones that blocked out the bulk of the noise and let me work. You can’t control what everyone else around you is doing, but you are in full control of your own response.

October 8, 2024

Greg Thomas

The Formation of Patterns

I want to start my day with a tea each day. That one is easy to accomplish. I also want to go for a run or bike, these are harder to accomplish. Each week I try to do a bit more. To accomplish this, I’ve made sure that the routes don’t change, the paths get worn down, and the same equipment is worn. They aren’t there yet, but the patterns are forming, falling into their familiar structure of ruts and grooves that keep them inline and make it harder to fall out of line of them. Find the pattern, repeat

Overt Customizations

You purchase a product. You customize it. You customize it some more. You keep tinkering and tweaking until there is nothing left of the original save for your customizations. You now have a mess of an upgrade on your hands. You now have time spent figuring out why you had to customize it to the nth degree. If you’re having to customize something you bought that much, it might be a sign, you need to build it. Either that or document everything you do from Day 1 (and we know how that works).

September 29, 2024

Greg Thomas

Lead the Calm

When Leading your team out of the storm, they aren’t looking for Thunder and Lightning. They are looking for calm. They are looking for someone to lead them out of the storm with calm. Lead them that way.