Planning to Fail

Great title for a post, isn’t it? Seems foolish, lazy, or worse to plan for failure, right? Yet, in the real world, stuff fails all the time. Sometimes we could have done more, sometimes we can’t afford to do more, sometimes it’s just the way things are. As DBA’s we’re usually thinking about backups and […]

SSC Editorial – Great Service

I wrote the editorial about great service after noticing a couple small but interesting customer service experiences during two trips. I’ve continued to think about it since writing it. It’s an obvious win, but not an easy win, or even obvious on how do achieve the win. How we figure that out? Maybe not complete, […]

Do You Have Influence? Part 2

I started writing on influence last week and promised some comments on how to build influence and credibility. There are a lot of ways to do both, some maybe more effective than others, and some perhaps more cynical than others. Hopefully these will get you thinking and from there you can decide what works for […]

Failing Fast

I’ll have a longer post next week about my own risk strategy, but I wanted to write this first, both to start getting some ideas working and to see the questions that arise. Failure of any kind isn’t widely regarded as good, and I’m not encouraging anyone to not plan. But especially in business and […]

Default to Yes

There are a lot of times when the decision matters less than who makes it. A common if simplified example is a code review; whoever ‘wins’ the review gets to feel some ownership, and all too often the win is style rather than substance. I see it in managers a lot, they want to do […]

Book Review: Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Personal Brand on the Business Battlefield

I found Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Personal Brand on the Business Battlefield by David D’Alessandro ($12@ Amazon) in the audio section at the library, one of those happy occurrences when I’m looking with no particular item in mind, just something interesting to listen to while I drive. I’m fan of personal […]

Notes on Mentoring

Being a good mentor is hard, perhaps harder than being a parent, because with children it’s fair to share with them all of your ideals. I’ve accrued some interesting life experiences and some interesting skills that give me my particular view point, but the goal isn’t to clone me or otherwise drive them to adopt […]

The Vacation Backlash

Maybe I need a better name for it, but I’m describing the pain that happens when you’re getting ready for vacation and returning from one. I bet most of you have gone through it, and it’s easy to get to the point where going on vacation seems like more trouble than it’s worth! The upfront […]

Making Choices Narrows Your Remaining Options

I’ve had variations of this conversation a couple of times lately and thought it was worth writing down some thoughts. The essence of the problem is that people are often frustrated that an early decision ‘boxes them in’. Absolutely it does, and that’s why it’s important to figure out which decisions to make early, because […]

Why Would They Coach Me?

During a recent call I was talking with someone about achieving a career goal (coaching in itself, though unplanned) and I suggested that someone we both knew would be an excellent coach towards achieving that goal. Finding a coach that has the expertise is usually hard, in this case I could easily name someone. Which […]