You’ve just started a new project. You have the expertise to finish your portion of the tasks. You’ve got reasonable deadlines, the right amount of resources, and best of all, you believe in the work you’re doing. Looking over all your preparation work, you think you’re ready to start working. Think again. Whenever you begin […]
We want things now. Yesterday even. We have short attention spans, and we don’t have time to wait. If we don’t get it soon, we’re not going to wait around for it. Your customers have ten billion different options to choose from, so you better get it out the door. These are probably all true. […]
After a pretty intense November, our team took a long-ish break over the Thanksgiving holidays. Jacob and I completed a move (complete with UHaul truck) and took some time out to visit friends. Besides checking in our help forums and email, we let the business run on its own for about a week. That’s, of […]
If you’ve ever worked for a project manager (or heaven forbid, you are one like me), then you know we love processes. We like to plan ahead, bring stability and keep things moving forward. All these things require processes that let everyone on the team know what to do.
People want desperately to stand out. There’s one surefire way you can do just that with two little words: Follow. Through. When you do what you say you’ll do, magical things happen: Superiors recognize your work. People start depending on you. You earn the trust of your peers. Everyone listens to you. Co-workers want to […]
Since my last post focused on leaving a team, I thought I’d look at the flip side of the picture on what to do when you join a new team. (You know that song, right? “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”) Joining a new team can seem daunting: you have to rebuild […]
Normally, I write about how to maintain healthy relationships at work. Sometimes, however, you have to leave a team. You may choose to go because you’ve found a better opportunity. You may quit because you’ve decided the job isn’t right for you. Or you may be fired or let go under unfortunate circumstances.
In response to my post about viewing your teammates as idiots last week, Cara wrote: I have yet to see that there is a successful way to get people to stop thinking of almost all others as “idiots” if they don’t want to. Sometimes this is straight-up narcissism on their part, but sometimes I think […]
If all you do is complain: You don’t solve any problems. You don’t get anything done. You feel bad. You cause other people to waste time. You don’t learn anything new. You waste time. You stir up negativity with no recourse. You reveal ignorance to other people’s problems. You lose the respect of people who […]
I used to work for a software engineer with horrible estimation skills. Our boss always wanted him to give the rosiest estimates possible of when the product would be done. He always came back with the estimate our boss wanted to hear, knowing full well the team couldn’t deliver. This was equally frustrating for me […]
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