Misc

I’m Not a Bozo!

Something fun for Friday, this was a gift from the client I work with to lighten things up and do some stress relief – punch it and it comes right back up. It sits on a table in the corner when I’m in the room, but I’ve taken to putting it my chair when I’m […]

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Done or Not Done

One of the things I hear a lot relating to work big and small is that it is “almost done”, with a close relative “basically done”, often spoken as they reach for the marker to cross of an item on the task list. I can appreciate that it’s useful to indicate progress in a simpler […]

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Jedi Mind Tricks

Here’s a story from a recent meeting. We were discussing some problems and the team was talking through some options that were very interesting, technically good, just not ones that could get done for a variety of reasons. It’s frustrating to be in that position, seeing at least a “better” solution on the good/better/best range […]

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The Armor of Transparency

Yesterday I blogged about hosting a daily status meetings and some of the tricks I use to make it work. One of those that is worth extra attention is the meeting notes – at the end of each meeting I send out notes (not minutes – not that formal) that include: Who attended Key metrics […]

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The Daily Status Meeting

For the past six months or so I’ve hosted a daily status meeting for a large project. It started out scheduled for 15 minutes and as the team grew, I found that we often ran out of time – not due to idle chit chat, but because we spent 3 or 4 or 5 minutes […]

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First Impressions

I was chatting with a friend recently who had been in turn chatting with a colleague about first impressions. The colleague had gone to the lobby to meet a candidate and escort them to the interviewer, and during the walk had tried to make small talk, offered them some water, and didn’t get much interaction. […]

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Review: I Done This

IDoneThis is a simple web site for tracking accomplishments. The premise is that you get a checkbox on the calendar each time you post an update, the string of checkboxes serves as an incentive to keep going. There is no goal setting beyond picking daily or weekly for the update frequency. You do a simple […]

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Stages of the Game?

Saw this post by Seth Godin on Stages of the Game. Interesting, I identified with it – I’m competitive, and competing means understanding the rules and sometimes playing the boundaries. Calling it a game doesn’t, in my view at least, trivialize the effort and impact of trying to win. Winning, in the context of every […]

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An Unclassy Error

I saw this on a TV while walking through a store. More than a but amusing, but not too helpful to the user. Seems like it would be easy enough to tell if the connection was not working and report that as a separate error.  

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