People and process
Hiring Technical Leaders – Finding the right balance
You’re a mid-sized company. You’re thinking of hiring an IT executive. How much technical skill should they have? IT management is a balance. Some folks cling to their technical backgrounds. They may manage a team of 20 but when push…
What happens when you’ve set a clear priority for your IT team.
Management’s key job is to set clear priorities. Without clear priorities, folks keep switching focus from task to task and nothing gets done. So, one of the first things we’ll want to do together is set some clear priorities. To…
Five years of work is not five years of experience
You have an employee. A solid employee, not stellar. Let’s call him Sam. Sam’s been with you for five years. And you’ve made sure his pay keeps up with the cost of living. Including the recent inflation craziness. But here’s…
Can we talk here?
Can you’re team actually say what they’re thinking? Or are they afraid? I’ve been frequently told that I say what everyone else is thinking. And indeed, especially when powered by numbers, I see no reason to hold back. But while…
The right person is not the smartest person
Technical folks are impressed by smart. How fast someone can code. How quickly they can learn a new skill. How many obscure features they’ve mastered of any given system. I think it’s better to ask – how right? As in…
Great people are great in context.
Tech folks love to talk about “really smart people”. I’ve been lucky to work with a lot of smart, effective people in my career. But I think that while raw brain power is good, being right for a given situation…
You’re no where without trust.
Geeks spend a lot of time talking about the best way to run a software projects. But no method works without trust. Trust that when something unexpected comes up, we’ll fix it. Trust that we can find a solution. Trust…
Please and Thank You
When she was a junior associate, my ex-wife once told the partner she was working for that please and thank you were like dress down day. It didn’t cost anything and they boosted morale. And, as in many things, she…
The only perfect employee is the one you haven’t hired
The only perfect employee is the one you haven’t hired. I am not a super patient person (cue the laugh track). So, when people frustrate me, I find myself daydreaming about that better person that I really should be able…
Software isn’t bitter
Software isn’t resentful. You have technical debt when your software works but doesn’t work well. It takes hours to run when it should take minutes. Or, there are hundreds of lines of code that no one really understands because the…