Articles for category: Leadership

January 25, 2021

Greg Thomas

Team Activities

The hardest part about being remote from your team is trying to figure out how to engage them on an ongoing basis. How do you keep them involved? How do you keep them engaged? Team activities are a great way, to get out there and do something together. Look at the team activities you’ve done in the past year – escape rooms, sporting challenges, outdoor excursions – in some way, shape or form they all involve you being engaged and with your team (in close proximity). That might not be possible now, and if so does it mean you stop

January 22, 2021

Greg Thomas

Starting Up in a Pandemic

One of the hardest parts about running a podcast is managing the backlog. I thought this was hard in software but when you are trying to record content in advance, so you can ship weekly and not skip a beat when something, like a Pandemic, happens it means content gets pushed out farther than we like. One of our best interviews of Season 2 of Remotely Prepared just shipped as our first episode of 2021. It’s with Erin Blaskie, Director of Marketing at Fellow, and if you’re looking for some tips on what it’s like to run a startup remotely,

January 21, 2021

Greg Thomas

Finding Pain Points

Every project has a set of pain points that aren’t a direct output of the project but are indirectly related to it. “We can’t find reference documents anywhere.” “People are always late for meetings.” “Meetings go on too long.” “Our architecture is a mess.” The list goes on and on and on. These are pain points to the delivery of the project. These are pain points that are not only slowing your team down, but are holding them back. These are pain points that threaten to hurt your team, weaken their resolve and kill their morale. These are the thousand

January 20, 2021

Greg Thomas

Works on my Machine

As a Developer, I have always hated saying these words, it always feels a bit like a copout – like I didn’t do my job, left something out, forgot a scenario, ignored something, etc, etc. I don’t mind the jokes that come with it (and they do come, in waves and torrents). When this happens my first thoughts are; Don’t say it. Ask for logs. Get a screenshot. Work the problem. It’s that last one that is so important that separates the issue from being lobbed over the fence for someone else to deal with or for picking it up

January 16, 2021

Greg Thomas

Running vs Attending Meetings

There is a very common myth that attending a meeting is work. It’s not, it’s clicking an invite, listening to people talk and interjecting when you might have an opinion. Now, if you were to run the meeting, well this is different – because then you are having to think about who needs to be there, who will contribute, what do you need to prepare, what should the focus be, where do you want people to think about when they leave, what messages matter and on and on. Attending – you don’t need to do much. Running – you are

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