Archives December 2022

Employee resource groups

No matter how we organise ourselves, we will always be in siloes one way or another. There will be organisational divisions. It’s important to connect people across those divisions as well. One way to do that is communities of practice , a k.a. guilds or chapters. Here’s another.

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Commuting

I remember I used to think my consulting job was pretty cool because I only needed to go into the city 3 or 4 times a week.
Now I go once a month, if that, and can’t wait to get back home.
Especially if our favorite cafe has closed 😢
It has been shut since August but we just found out today

Blog posts for November 2022

It wouldn’t be a complete month on our blog without some political posts, because work is political in the 21st Century

Jack Welch didn’t break capitalism, Milton Friedman did.

If one person is to blame for shareholder capitalism, it’s not Jack Welch, it’s Milton Friedman.

Optimism is a duty

Optimism is a duty. The future is open. It is not predetermined. No one can predict it, except by chance. We all contribute to determining it by what we do. We are all equally responsible for its success.
– Karl Popper


There were the usual posts about work and management:

What Great Remote Managers Do Differently

What Great Remote Managers Do Differently, HBR. I’m going to quote at length. Read the article. It reinforces everything we say at Teal Unicorn.

Performance management anti-patterns

Organisations expend so much money and effort on measuring and reviewing people like work machines, when it could be better spent in supporting them in their own self improvement. People know what they want and need to be better at, especially those working in a healthy team.

I’m reminded of nations that use guns and bombs to “liberate” countries instead of winning hearts and minds with healthcare and education.

Building teams

You can’t build teams. Only teams can build teams. People aren’t bricks.
We can facilitate, support, coach, advise  … but the team builds the team. They’re grownup peers.

The Backlog vs the Bucket.


Here’s an idea for thinking differently about Backlog.

What to do about poor service

if your service providers give you poor service what can you do to fix them? I take a systemic view: it is seldom solely the service provider’s fault.


And about consulting

The worst dysfunctions of consulting

When I started out in consulting, I thought I had to show how much I know.
That has several negative effects, but there were even worse dysfunctions lurking.


Continuing our series on our personal world, Teal Life

The power of love

People ask how we make working together successful.

 


And for a little humour:

they are a-changin’

It’s time to resurrect an old character from my IT Skeptic blog, the troubadour Rambling Kid Realitsm [bonus points for those who can spot the classic comedy reference], who has changed his name to Rambling Sid Open-o, to bring back his old hit, “Changin’”

Agile coaching

Agile coaching is a hot topic. It is in vogue in the IT world to heap derision on the whole profession of agile coaching. There may be a quality issue, but stop saying agile coaches need to be software developers.  The discussion is of interest to non-IT people too, so I share it here.

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