Blog

April 29, 2016

Greg Thomas

Week-Over-Week

Don’t you hate when you spend the day before the week to start and you meticulously lay out your week in front of you.  You’ve got your beautiful TODO lists all planned out, tasks, boards, charts, post-its, whatever it is you do to get organized and then… BOOM Monday starts and you’re already pushing pieces out to the next day, and then the next and next thing you know you’re starting to get ready for next week realizing you didn’t accomplish what you had initially intended to get done. So what happened? Did you not make the time? Did the urgent

April 28, 2016

Greg Thomas

What to look for in a Mentor

Tough topic, mentors, everyone (I think) wants one.  A guru of sage advice that probably resembles more Yoda then the Emperor.  I’ve read articles where people announced their mentors to the world and engaged them as a mentor early on in their careers even sought them out.  And still others who perhaps didn’t engage their mentor per se, but from afar read everything they had to offer, every book, post, tweet, etc and soaked it up like a sponge so they could never miss a beat. But what do we really look for? A listening ear. Advice for when things go

April 27, 2016

Greg Thomas

Senior Years but Junior Experience

There is a problem that arises when someone pivots in technology to a new platform, new language, new coding standard, etc. They expect to jump into that same level of position, but with only junior experience behind them. It’s a hard pivot – you’ve spent 10 years doing Oracle Databases and now you are a PHP programmer for 6 months?  Some of these pivots are complimentary where the skills carry over but sometimes they are not – i.e., going from Google Apps to SharePoint App Development.  The only thing you’re really leveraging is your ability to learn and try something new.

April 26, 2016

Greg Thomas

Too much noise

There should be an app that tracks; appointment reminders calendar invites emails texts tweets pokes tags pings pongs The last one isn’t real – but you get the idea (or maybe it is). How high would that number be?  Would it surprise you? All of that is what surrounds us on a daily basis, we live it, breathe it and it gets in the way of getting all that we want to get it done.  It’s the outside noise that surrounds us now, that envelops and surrounds us, from morning to night.  We could turn it off, but then we might be

April 25, 2016

Greg Thomas

Team Leadership for the Kids

I was trying to describe to someone a few weeks ago what it means when you are leading a team while at the same time fielding questions on how you deal with scenarios that might arise.  In it’s most simplest forms you need to think of your team as your kids and if you’re the leader of that team, congratulations you are now a single parent. How does that translate into what you’re trying to do? Your kid is having trouble with their homework?  Are you going to fire them from 3rd grade?  Probably not, you’re going to put in the