Articles for category: Leadership

December 13, 2021

Greg Thomas

Where the Faults Are

Every team has its fault lines, a divide where multiple faults come together.  If you live near the fault line you know it exists.  The further you get away from it, the less important it seems or the potential for harm exists because it is “over there” and not near you. At any point in time, it’s the role of the Dev Manager to know what faults will trigger these lines to break and fall down upon one another.  Because if it does happen, they are the person on the ground looking to repair their damage and help their team

December 11, 2021

Greg Thomas

A three minute call is all it took

No one should ever be part of a call that is delivered in this fashion.  Your company should have all the breakers in place to ensure this never happens. Hopefully the last of these we ever hear of, but here’s our take on Remotely Prepared – https://www.upsidedownoffice.com/podcast/this-weeks-3-minute-mass-zoom-firing And here is one of many articles that references this debacle. All I can say, is something of this magnitude should never be phoned in, and this is what it felt like for these employees.  

December 1, 2021

Greg Thomas

I’m Here for the Checkboxes

The last thing anyone wants to hear at a meeting – someone is here solely to say we had the meeting. If this is the case, show them how to create a form, how to track that boxes are being checked and iterated over. Do anything and everything, so that this statement is not uttered in your meeting when you are trying to lead people to work through a problem and deliver. Your people need (and deserve) leadership, not checkboxes.

November 25, 2021

Greg Thomas

Avoiding THE Plan

There is no point in having a plan if you’re not going to follow it. But there is also no point in avoiding making a plan, simply because you didn’t follow it in the past. Not having a plan is okay for you – “I’ll wing it and figure it out when I get there” – but definitely not good for your team and you as a leader. If it’s your first time planning, getting started is easy – ask your team what they need to see and start working through that list, inevitably you will add other pieces that

November 24, 2021

Greg Thomas

Hitting a Moving Target

Aiming for a moving target is easy – we do it every day as we try to line up plans and delivery schedules to get to where we need to be. At some point, there become too many variables in play that you are no longer planning for delivery but instead trying to figure out how everything comes together. If you’re finding yourself overwhelmed by the variables and not the output, focus on removing variables to stop the constant moving around and provide you bigger focus. Aiming is like putting a plan in motion, it’s easy to aim and say

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