I had this concept a number of years ago when I was starting out as a Software Manager and had to build a team from scratch of all new people and spent a lot of time thinking about what kind of people I wanted to have on my team.  There were some people I hired at the time that ran counter to some conventional wisdom and for the most part it all worked out in…

From the movie Apollo 13 I don’t care what anything was designed to do. I care about what it can do. – Gene Kranz Achieving certifications, degrees, diplomas, etc take a considerable amount of time and effort and you should be congratulated (and/or congratulate those ) that have undertaken such an endeavour to push yourself further than others. But you/we need to avoid falling into the trap where we quote our qualifications and use that as…

I’m learning to draw. It’s hard, I’m not very good at it, it is taking a ton of effort. I have a goal of trying to do 30 minutes per day to hit that as an achievement.  What I draw in the space of that 30 minutes is totally up to me.  But when you are not very good at something and you are literally starting at Ground Zero – it can take a significant…

So what do you think? Is this what you want? Am I on the right track? Tough questions when via email, chat, voice or more importantly standing right in front of you asking you face-to-face. If you are in the business of constantly being asked for feedback by your peers or direct reports than you should check out this piece written by Seth Godin on giving feedback.  It provides a great set of guidelines and…

Whether your in a position of authority or leadership or simply the gal whose been assigned to get a task done where whatever little bit of authority you have could be gone tomorrow when you move onto the next project the question is always the same – should I ask or should I tell? One could argue that the end “task completion” result will always be higher when you tell someone what to do, after all…