Articles for category: Leadership

September 23, 2020

Greg Thomas

Remote Mentorship

For our final interview of Season 1 of Remotely Prepared, we were fortunate to sit down with Stacy Cassio – Founder & CEO of the Pink Mentor Network. It was a great interview and a perfect note to end the season on as Stacy talks about her experiences in growing her mentorship company on a remote scale. There is a ton of great information in it, so if you haven’t had a chance to listen to it, here it is. Full Episode

September 22, 2020

Greg Thomas

Onboarding is Changing

We used to put a lot of effort into what someone would see at their desk when they arrived on their first day. Some getting started reading, some papers to sign, a great workstation with new equipment, perhaps a lunch out on the first day to get to know you better and of course, the flybys by the leadership team throughout the day welcoming you to the company. How much of this is still happening? And if it is how are you giving it that personal feel to it? Are the equipment and books coming straight from Amazon? Are the

September 20, 2020

Greg Thomas

But We Didn’t Know?

I always cringe a bit inside when I hear this statement. It’s generally applied as an effect to a cause that just happened. A release is late because an interface-breaking library was implemented that pushed things back. Requirements are taking longer to deliver then expected. QA is finding more bugs than they originally planned for. People are stretched too thin because they are doing work across multiple releases and branches at the same time. I shake my head every time I hear this statement because I know the amount of work that goes into making all of this information available

September 19, 2020

Greg Thomas

The beginning of any Release

This is how I imagine the beginning of any software release. Birds chirping because it’s the first thing we’re doing this morning is kicking this project off. There is fresh fruit and bagels on the table because nothing reminds you more of something brand new than fresh fruit. Everyone is in a great mood, primarily because nothing has had a chance to go wrong yet. Everything and anything is possible – any risks that exist are brushed off because we have “tons” of time. I’ve been through enough of these meetings to understand the importance of resetting the team once

September 17, 2020

Greg Thomas

You Need to Invest (In Your Team)

If you are not asking yourself each week what you can be doing your team. You’re not leading your team. Every week, you need to take stock of where they were the week before and what they need to be focused on this week. You need to look at what is on their plate and judge if it is plausible for them to finish. You need to be identifying where the gaps in your team exist and what you need to do to help them overcome them and grow. The more you put into your team, the more they are