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Should it be a company’s ambition to keep people forever? For my parents’ generation and before it was common to stay with a company your whole career. In some cultures this is still the case. Things look quite differently now, so perhaps it is time to reevaluate if we
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> The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. These are essentially the first sentences in the first book on leadership I ever read: Leadership is an Art [https://amzn.to/2FSz1p3] by Max Depree, probably about 8 years ago. “Define
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> “Praise in public, criticize in private.” Take any feedback training, read any management book (this one excluded), and this is the advice you’ll find: praise in public, criticize in private. It’s so wide-spread that it’s just considered fact. This how things ought to be done. Period.
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> I am very disappointed in all of you. Just a few years ago, when Joe had a baby, the whole company would chip in. We were able to buy a great present. And now, just 17 people out of 120!? What happened to you, why don’t you care?
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Some years ago I had an important feature to develop. I assigned Martin, an engineering with ten years of experience to develop the feature. While the feature seemed relatively straight forward, it took Martin three months to fully deliver it. When the feature finally was ready to ship, the team’
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I have a core belief. One that even when I mention it to people makes myself think: “Oh, that’s so cute Zef, I hope nobody will ever burst that cutesy little bubble of yours!” Ready? Here goes. People are decent. I know, right? So cute! Now I know, there
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Last weekend I read Carol Sanford’s “No More Feedback” [https://amzn.to/2S2OZ2C] . It’s an intriguing book, and resulted in a “falling of my faith” type of situation. She challenges many “core beliefs” that I hold (or have been taught to hold). As a means for me to
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> “The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti Some years ago I shared feedback with a customer on our cooperation thus far — all with very constructive intentions. However, I made a mistake. I slipped in a piece of judgement, and that ended up
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“That sounds like something an automated test should have caught.” “If you cannot catch a basic bug like this, then what the hell is the QA department doing?” “Classic business, to pull a stunt like that!” Distance simplifies things. The larger the distance, the bigger this problem becomes. In some