Blog

January 8, 2016

Greg Thomas

Writing Presentations with SADLDP

I never thought I’d use Powerpoint as much as I do today and/or give as many presentations as I do (not one of my career goals when I was younger) but I do enjoy it now. Lately I’ve come to think of the formula that I use when putting together a presentation as I seek to improve on how I create them. Story.  What’s the Story?  This is key, no matter the content, what story am I trying to tell, what message do I want people to leave with, what takeaways or call to actions do I want them to have

January 7, 2016

Greg Thomas

What Makes a Great Performance Review?

Performance Reviews are seen as one of those necessary evils that are sometimes seen as the metric by which bonus compensations are best paid out.  I.e., what level of objectives did I meet that made earning this bonus relevant. This is a very tricky scenario because constant changing business conditions can throw the most adaptable performance review plans a curve ball making their content and criteria for compensation irrelevant.  But the fault for performance reviews do not lay solely with an organization (the Reviewer) but can also lay with the person receiving the review as well (the Reviewee).  There are those

January 6, 2016

Greg Thomas

The Hybrid Strategy

When thinking about moving to the cloud it’s very often portrayed as one or the other – Cloud or On-Premise. And this is wrong.  There is a third market which has existed for some time that organizations may find themselves in for an extended period of time as they trial, test and validate before going from on-premise to the cloud. The Hybrid. The Hybrid is the world where some of your organization exists on-premise and some in the cloud.  It might not be a direct break between organizations or people, it could be a segregation of applications or channels of communication – asynchronous in

January 5, 2016

Greg Thomas

No Goal is Too Small

I like the process of making resolutions, keeping them, infinitely harder. Some I am on track for keeping, some I am not. Others I have written down because they are really important to me, others I have not (and by way of not doing so, I know they are not really that important to me). One thing to remember is that it doesn’t matter the scale or size of your goal when you inevitably compare it with others. Case in point – I read Mark Zuckerberg’s 2016 Resolution for this year earlier this week. Whoa. My big maker goal is

January 4, 2016

Greg Thomas

It’s Easy to Lead when things are going well

Of course it’s easy – things are going well – you have the perfect team, the perfect set of projects, you are flush with cash, your customers are happy – you are potentially on cruise control as your team is doing so well and perhaps looking beyond to other opportunities. But when the chips are down… Budgets have been slashed. Too little resources, way too many projects that need to be delivered yesterday. Customers aren’t dissatisfied but they are eager for that next release that is a few months behind. Those are not easy conditions to try to lead through especially