Articles for category: Leadership

August 29, 2024

Greg Thomas

About Standards

If you’re going to ask your team to implement a set of standards, there are a few points to consider. Are you writing them or asking them to be written? Will you be following what is written? What value will they create? Do they simplify or complicate your team’s life? Of all these items to consider, if you, as the leader, are not willing to follow these standards, then you shouldn’t be asking for them to be written. Your team takes their cues from you. It can be good to delegate the creation of tasks to get different people’s inputs,

August 28, 2024

Greg Thomas

The Return of the Red Herring

There are two ways to shut down the constant stream of Red Herrings. Acknowledge their issue, and ask them if they want to run with it. Ask if that should be the team’s primary focus instead of what they are here to discuss. Ask them for their plan to resolve the issue. A few things will happen. They will not want to run with it. They will not want to change the team’s focus. They will not have a plan – if you stick with this line over and over, perhaps they will start showing up with a plan –

August 14, 2024

Greg Thomas

Your Archnemesis

We all have them, and they aren’t people – it’s the one thing that stops you in your tracks and frustrates you to no end. For me it’s TLS and certificates, it’s a pain, I’ve tried learning it over and over again.  I have bashed my head against the table on this subject over and over again.  I secretly hope it is replaced by something much simpler – i.e., SECURITY_ON and SECURITY_OFF Other people get them, they are my kryptonite. We all have our kryptonite, our nemesis, the best thing to do is to find people who get it so

August 13, 2024

Greg Thomas

The User’s Path

If you’re building tools for your users to use. It would be important to ask them… How are they going to use it? What will make them wake up every day and use it? Why do they need to have this? How will it save them time and why? All these questions are about your users and what they need from it.  We sometimes think we have the answers, but we often don’t. We have our perception of the answers, but those are just that, perceptions, not the answers themselves.

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