Articles for category: Leadership

November 4, 2019

Greg Thomas

The Local Pizza Shop

Will never die. It is one of the few vestiges, where you can go in, place your order and when you leave, it’s not the person who took your order who says thank you, but everyone behind the counter, each and every one of them saying thank you to you for purchasing their product. Run your business like the local pizza shop where everyone on your team recognizes how important the relationship of business to consumer is and all it takes is two words to make it that much stronger.

November 1, 2019

Greg Thomas

Well, what do you do?

There is a familiar phrase that can crop up in meetings or discussions where people are frustrated with what is happening and not sure who to assign the work to. “Well, what do you do? Can’t you do it?” The problem with this statement is it puts the onus on your team members to justify their position when this is in fact not their job to do. You hired them, you brought them onto the team, you are paying them. If you don’t know what they are doing, it’s not their problem to solve, but yours. Ask the question of

October 31, 2019

Greg Thomas

Last Day Productivity

If your team is closing all their stories and tasks on the last of the sprint you should consider moving your sprint duration to being one day. This sounds dumb right? It is. So is holding onto work that has no movement on it for two or three weeks and then magically closing everything on the last day. If your not sure if your team is guilty of this practice, check the work completed on the last day of the Sprint is it 85 hours across 5 people? If so, you might want to check where the issues lie in

October 28, 2019

Greg Thomas

Going Backwards

In sports, passing back is one of the hardest skills to learn as you grow older. For years you’ve taught to push through, go forward, don’t stop, look up, look at the goal, etc, etc (enter all the sports here). But to get to the next level, you need to learn to pass backward. You need to use your team. If you look ahead and they are all busy, the person behind you is the one who needs the pass, not in front. The goal is that will alleviate the pressure so that this person can then pass up and

October 24, 2019

Greg Thomas

Avoid Empire Building

Empire Building happens when we focus on building everything around us, getting all the right laptops and tablets, all the best tables, all the perks, all the bodies, all the chairs, all the everything that goes along with building an empire except doing the one thing that truly matters to building an empire. The requirements, i.e., the work that needs to be done, understanding the problem you are trying to resolve, realizing what order of work needs to be done, etc, etc. It’s the “stuff” that goes into creating an empire. When I say “bodies” I mean the extra bodies,

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