Articles for category: Leadership

October 17, 2015

Greg Thomas

The Anatomy of a Complaint

A complaint always comes to you in a few ways – in most cases it is either very loud (i.e., an explosion in a meeting) or very soft (i.e., someone coming into your office, slumping down in their chair, feeling dejected). Whichever the case I’m constantly amazed at the overall contrast between the need for people to make the complaint vs the desire to do something about it.  These are two very different things and they originate from the above – getting it out – feeling like you have unloaded and/or transferred it to someone else which creates this initial bit

September 13, 2015

Greg Thomas

Making the Unpopular Call

There are times, when the unpopular call is the only call to make. However, it’s unpopular for a reason, because it most likely causes any of the following; The team wonders why we are making this change? It may work, it may not, you don’t know. It’s probably late in the game and something needs to give. Initially, it causes confusion and fear – why what did we do to get here, surely there is another option? To add to all of this, you are hearing it and feeling it while the call is being made.  It’s not the most popular call,

September 10, 2015

Greg Thomas

The Case for Overtime

I’ve read a number of blogs and articles on the horrors of overtime and what it can do to your mind, body and soul. They are all true. Working 16 hour days is a schedule you won’t always be able to keep up. Staying in at lunch to code a few for bugs might give you a crick in the neck and make you moody. Helping someone over that hurdle of how to run the build machine or understand a new feature while your work sits there waiting to be done will probably decrease your “Me” time on this day.

August 27, 2015

Greg Thomas

How to Build a Great Team

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 the end. Instead of doing it as a blog post, I did another SlideShare presentation that let me lay out my thoughts a little more

August 24, 2015

Greg Thomas

Quoting Qualifications

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 a shield to not answer the questions and fix the problem.  A few months ago I sent an inquiry to one of my daughter’s coaches

© 2025 Rambli by Greg Thomas. All rights reserved.