Benefit of the Doubt
When I start to work with a new team, whether it is with a new group for a training session, a new client site where I will be working for a period of time, or that client brings a new employee into the fold, I tend to start with the assumption that everything is good out of the gate. My initial trust is pretty high, and I have high expectations that we’re going to get along well and do good work together. I tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, even if people have tried to warn me in advance. Read more
Trust Retention
When I let one of my kids know they’ve got 10 minutes before we need to be out the door for one of their activities, it’s a safe bet that the response I will get is an “OK Dad.” Unfortunately, it is also a pretty safe bet that we’ll be getting out the door more than a few minutes late. It’s a dance we have fallen into that happens all too often with technical teams as well. I can’t trust them to be good to their word, and I have fallen into the trap of just letting that happen. Read more
Faith in the Process
Generally in software development, process has been described as the steps we take to get things done, and is often captured as a specified approach to building our products that involves some sort of lifecycle, a collection of roles and responsibilities, a series of artifacts we produce along the way, perhaps some milestones, and some checks and balances to keep the whole thing going smoothly. There is more than meets the eye if we want our approach to be successful. Read more
Consulted
I’m in the process of putting together a project that will involve a number of external resources from different disciplines. The intent is to build a product that will require technical, sales and marketing resources, and likely some branding and analytics effort, most of which will come from external consultants that I know. Being a consultant myself, I have learned the cost of totally missing the mark with a proposal, but I think this is the first time it has happened to me. I feel I have not been listened to, I feel insulted. I realize that this is the concern I often have to battle against with prospects, that they are going to feel ‘consulted’. Read more
Trust Proxies
I recently sat down for a discussion with a prospect about why they should use our services. I have faith that we are the right people to develop the application they are looking for from the technical perspective. From the purchaser’s perspective, though, everyone they talk to will have that same spin. How do we engender a measure of trust when we’re an unknown? Read more
Descent into Conflict
I facilitated an intense 2-day offsite for a group recently. High expectations for lots of learning, lots of communication and lots of progress. As the group had not done many of these in the past, part of the session was intended to allow each other to learn about the diverse groups represented. Read more
A Good Auditor is Your Friend
There was a time in my career where I was naïve enough to think that everyone was always focused on improving their job performance whenever possible. Read more
Books
Develop skills to thrive in the face of workplace chaos (now available at Banyen Books and selected Chapters and Coles in Vancouver):
Ten years of observations on agility, in e-book form:
A practical guide to human dynamics in project teams:
