The Problem Solver. Ever scoffed at personality types? Surely none of us are just one thing, but often we are mostly one thing, or at least one thing that is easily identified as being a big part of who we are. Writing this I was thinking about two things from the perspective of a manager: […]
Read more "SSC Editorial: The Problem Solver"How do you get the boss to pay for training? In my experience you have to: Ask. The boss isn’t sitting around thinking of ways to make your life better Align. Ask for training that is relevant, or show how it is relevant if not obvious Persist. Even if you do a nice clean ask, […]
Read more "How To Get The Boss To Pay For Training"If you work with colleagues that aren’t as interested in growing and learning as you are, I hope you’ll read Infect Your Colleagues with the Learning Bug. It’s both a how-to and a caution against pushing too hard. It’s an interesting topic, I’ll be curious to see the tone of the discussion that develops.
Read more "SSC Editorial: Infect Your Colleagues with the Learning Bug"I tend to be amused when I run into something that causes me stress because I like to think – foolishly – that I’ve learned to manage stress and even avoid it by dealing with the underlying source of the stress. Last week I was in a meeting for 3-1/2 days. More workshop than meeting. […]
Read more "A New Stressor"I found Tell Me How I’m Doing by Richard L. Williams at the local library. It’s a book about giving feedback, told as a story. To condense a lot, the technique they teach is to think of everyone having a ‘feedback bucket’ that has holes in the bottom. If a manager doesn’t put enough feedback […]
Read more "Review: Tell Me How I’m Doing"The Abilene Paradox by Jerry Harvey is not a new book, written in 1988. It’s part of some reading I’m doing for a project. The book is about management and is a series of stories/essays. It’s not a book I’d recommend to a first time or first level manager, but for all that it had […]
Read more "Review: The Abilene Paradox"Back in April Steve Jones mentioned reading a review of The Phoenix Project by mutual friend Thomas LaRock. It’s a book about IT written as a story that covers the trials and mishaps that all of us will identify with – corrupted data, SAN failure, too many projects, unrealistic demands, etc. The goal is to […]
Read more "Review: The Phoenix Project"I like a good status report. It may contain a few sentences or a page full of data and gauges, but done well it quickly and crisply tells the story of where we’re at on a project or task – the good, the bad, and the ugly! It seems like too often status reports are […]
Read more "Status Reports"A pattern I’ve seen over and over again at many different jobs is that some people are not held accountable for mistakes, inaction, or even lack of participation, and others seem to be held hyper-accountable. Why is that? Why would a manager not treat everyone equally? As you might guess, I’ve got a theory! It’s […]
Read more "Why Isn’t Everyone Accountable? A Work Conundrum"One of the things I’ve learned from running events is to set expectations. If you’re going to provide coffee don’t run out of coffee – they expect it to be there. If you’re not going to provide coffee, that’s ok, as long as you let your attendees know. The thing about expectations that is hard […]
Read more "Expectations-The Big Disconnect"
SQLAndy 