I’m a big believer in 1:1 meetings on manager-led teams. It’s a way to connect with people, stay in touch with progress, learn about problems early, coach, work on career goals, offer feedback. But if you are the manager for a self-organizing team, you need to adjust the way you do 1:1 meetings. First, unless [...]
Samuel Culbert interviewed on NPR. Employee performance reviews should be eliminated, according to UCLA business professor Samuel Culbert. “First, they’re dishonest and fraudulent. And second, they’re just plain bad management,” There’s also an excerpt from Culbert’s book, Get Rid of the Performance Review! He doesn’t pull any punches. It’s time to finally put the performance review [...]
We’ve long lived with the assumption that the people at the top of the organizations are the ones who understand the business. They understand the market, the product, the customers. They hold the financial information about how the company makes money and the current financial status. Since they hold this info, they also know what [...]
Is success or failure really a choice? I don’t think it is at all. Pretty much no one chooses to fail. Unfortunately, we can’t just choose to be successful either. What we CAN choose is to try to make a success out of a failure! The old saying “Make lemonade out of lemons” really is [...]
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The United States Department of Defense Command and Control Research Program has published a short (10 pages) paper on the concept of Agility (by David S. Alberts) and the need for Agility for Complex Endeavors. Lots of fabulous thinking has gone into this paper which is loaded with useful definitions, useful concepts and advice about [...]
I received an email advertising a workshop for managers, titled “Overcoming a Culture of Entitlement,” last week. Here’s the hook: “When employees feel “entitled,” they resist change, they drag their feet, they’re not accountable, and leaders are constantly frustrated.” Who are these leaders that are constantly frustrated? Might they be the same ones who had [...]
Cross-posted from the personal blog of David D. Parker: A Changemaker in the Making I am engaged in a learning process with a charity that has undertaken to implement a new model of volunteer coordination based on OpenAgile, an open source agile method. We recently held an orientation with our new volunteers. In the hopes [...]
I’m uncomfortable with the manager vs. leader dichotomy that’s bandied about lately. Most of the time, the conversation is reduced to a sound bite: “Managers do things right, leaders to the right thing” (from a Warren Bennis quote). Cute, but not helpful. There is no single definition of management or leadership. How you define either [...]
A close associate, David Parker, has written a great little article about the use of agile methods in volunteer management.
Cross-posted from my personal blog: A Changemaker in the Making For the past several weeks, I have been helping a small charity solve a dilemma. Because the charity is well-recognized for their good work, they regularly attract volunteers who want to help. Unfortunately, the two overworked staff members are too busy to recruit, train, and [...]