So, are you managing? “I’m not a manager,” you might be thinking. People often don’t think about managing if they don’t have that title on their business cards. But consider these management roles we all play: Upwards Management: For most of us, there’s someone up the business food chain that is responsible for making sure […]
You know the cliche “out of the box” thinking? Do you know what it means? It took me a while to figure this one out. I always thought of “the box” as being a construct someone else had created for me – my teachers, my boss, my co-workers. But when I met people who truly […]
Part of creating a good task and team management system is that the layout needs to be familiar. Now that we’re within spitting distance of launching a closed beta of Fellowstream, we have a pretty comprehensive list of icons that we use through Fellowstream’s many streams, including the Workspace and Project Systems. Check out a […]
I am an extremely goal oriented person. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t working towards something. As a 6-year-old I decided I wanted to be an actress and enlisted my sisters in 3-person, 1-act plays of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Hansel and Gretel. Today, the goals have become more sophisticated. I […]
Networking. It’s who you know, not what you can do. You gotta get out there and meet people. Schmooze. Enjoy late night parties at conferences and have war stories of getting drunk with strangers in bars. It’s all part of the game of launching a new business. Or so they say. I hope they’re wrong. […]
Once upon a time, in 1804, Meriwether Lewis woke up on a cold winter morning and realized something was missing in his life. As a child, he liked nature and hiking, and here he was, living in the heart of Washington D.C. Certainly, he had more to offer his country than simply being a public […]
I’ve talked a lot about self-managed teams in the past few weeks, and why you might want to use one. The tricky part is self-managed teams just don’t run themselves. For those of you who just re-read that previous sentence a few times, let me clarify. I’ve defined a self-managed team as one that has […]
Everybody has had a time working on a team with a freeloader. Dead weight. Leech. Moocher. Whatever you want to call it, you have a team member who just doesn’t do her share of the work, or perhaps worse, does the work so sloppily that it’s no good to anyone. The question is, whose problem […]
We’ve been burning the midnight oil here to get a Fellowstream closed beta out into the wild. We only have a few more features to implement: wikis for projects and groups, calenders for people and projects, and a more streamlined WYSIWYG interface for new ticket creation (we didn’t like the basic feel of the current […]
In my last blog, I gave a brief introduction to self-managed teams. Of course, not all teams should be structured entirely so that each individual manages both herself and the output of the team. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if a surgeon did not direct nurses during a delicate surgery or if a coach […]
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