Articles for category: Leadership

February 19, 2022

Greg Thomas

What We Don’t Know

This is the best way to start a meeting where no one knows what is happening or what the problem is. It sets the tone and gets people into the right mindset. It’s not about justifying your position. Assigning blame. Or analyzing what did or did not go wrong. It’s about getting everyone on the same page before deciding to move forward.

Not Another Subscription

Everything is a subscription, we don’t buy it outright, we get dinged every day, week, month, and year based on our usage.  And if we don’t use it enough there are base fees to “keep the lights on”. Not everything needs a subscription, not everything needs an account, a login, or a profile that does everything except cancel it. I don’t pay a subscription fee for my shoes and they are doing just fine. If you are charging a subscription fee, make sure you are making that fee worthwhile, otherwise, sell me on creating another profile.

February 15, 2022

Greg Thomas

Do You Own It or Run It

When you own something you treat it very differently than if you were simply running it. Owning it means you are responsible for it, you have a vested interest in it, you want to see it succeed and become something greater. Running it is making it gets from point A to B as quickly as possible. We make Owning it sound like a bad thing because then we are responsible and accountable for the outcome and that is a “a lot”. It’s not, but it is what we need to grow.  

February 14, 2022

Greg Thomas

Going from Zero to One Hundred

Whether you are restarting with an old team or starting with a new team – the last week of “things opening up” was probably stressful for you and your team. Not only that, how many times have we been through this before?  (I don’t want to count, but I know the number is lurking in the back of my head). You have a ton of things to catch up on, you have to motivate your team to get back into the swing of things on top of everything else they are struggling with. Know, that even though you need to

February 13, 2022

Greg Thomas

Software Leadership Series: Get a Theme

Every Software Team needs to have a Theme. Something that defines their existence, their purpose, and who they are. This Theme can morph and change as the team grows and develops. It might not be readily “seen” what the Theme is, you might not know where to start and if that’s the case, start with this year – What is your theme for your team for this year? What do you want them to accomplish? How do you want them to grow? What matters to you and to them? The Theme is what we come back to when we are