I think all managers are told they must delegate to succeed and/or survive. Seems obvious, a manager can’t do it all, nor should they. So why don’t more managers delegate successfully? The first reason is that often they were promoted from within the team they manage, and doing stuff is their comfort zone, plus they […]
Read more "Delegating"Here’s the editorial for SSC today and while it’s a humorous story about asking for donuts and getting a free breakfast for everyone, it’s also a cautionary tale for those trying to do good as managers, and even for employees submitting suggestions. Looking back, I still think it was a fair suggestion in response to […]
Read more "The Breakfast Plan Goes Awry"As the owner of a meeting/discussion you have two options on how to drive the conversation, and which you use depends on the answer you want. Sound cynical? Perhaps, but read on! Technique one is to say ‘this is what I’m thinking about as a plan/direction’ and invite comment. That typically frames the conversation so […]
Read more "Leaders in Meetings"For years, ever since I was first required to be on call, I’ve made it a habit to check my email each morning when I get up, seeing if there are problems to solve. Not a bad habit, could even call it diligent, since it’s not a good idea to wait until you walk in […]
Read more "Building Better (Different) Habits"Last week I wrote an editorial for SQLServerCentral titled Does The Job Matter To You?, asking how much the type of work mattered – what if you could do something you really wanted to and make the same money? As usual the comments (90 or so as I write this) are far more interesting than […]
Read more "Does The Job Matter To You?"A friend is moving into a leadership role for the first time and we talked some about making that transition. Here’s a guy with tons of skills and life experience, taking on a new challenge and totally out of his comfort zone, what advice to offer? Here’s my try at it. There are a lot […]
Read more "Thoughts on Leadership"I saw The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande ($15 @ Amazon) at the bookstore and had to read it. I’ve used a few checklists over the years, short ones and long ones, the longer ones perhaps stretching the definition and being more of a standard operating procedure (SOP) type document. The main setting for the […]
Read more "Book Review: The Checklist Manifesto"A couple weeks ago I wrote about testing the LinkedIn polling capability, putting up this poll: The response rate wasn’t great, only 34 responses, but none of them valued technical competence as the most important attribute. That feels right, and it’s powerful statement to managers; be a manager, not the alpha geek. But it’s also […]
Read more "Follow Up: LinkedIn Poll"I’ve had this on my list to write about for a while, just didn’t have a great example until this week. It took me a while to learn, but a key lesson for me is that I’ve never had an idea that wasn’t made better by involving other people that wanted to make the idea […]
Read more "Pride of Idea Ownership"I had not heard of the stay interview until a friend sent over a link. The idea is that rather than waiting until they leave to diagnose what went wrong, you do periodic interviews to find out how they are doing and encourage them to stay. I’m interested in this from a management perspective, and […]
Read more "Stay Interview Instead of Exit Interview"
SQLAndy 