If You Want Something Done, Practice Your Patience
As a manager you've been taught, either by your peers, or through hard knocks, to avoid micromanaging your teams. You quickly learn that micromanagement only alienate people.
Anyway, I have noticed that delegation appears to be a difficult concept for inexperienced managers that I had the opportunity to mentor. Delegation does not come naturally. Newly appointed supervisors often think “If you want something done, do it yourself.”
Delegation of authority is an investment and you need patience and time to see your investment come to fruition. It may take a few weeks, a few months, or a year but your patience will be rewarded in the end.
This is the theme of Jurgen Appelo's humorous article.
[via NOOP.NL]
Original photo by mrsmas and published under SXC license.
Patterns and Practices for Distributed Teams
If you are working with teams distributed across multiple timezones, you know how difficult it can be to operate efficiently at times. Over the years, you surely have experimented and tried out different patterns or processes that work in your context.
I have been working for ten years with teams that were in timezones seven to thirteen hours away from my own and we have experimented quite a bit. This is fun and frustrating at the same time.
J.D. Meiers exposes some patterns and practices that will work with distributed teams. I have found that those patterns are not appropriate in every circumstances but they are an excellent summary that will prevent you from reinventing the wheel
[via J.D. Meier's Blog]
Original photo by extranoise and published under an Creative Commons Attribution License
In your organization, are the right people on the bus?
In his book "Good To Great", Jim Collins introduces the notion of "Bus" as a simple metaphor to describe an organization and its employees.
In an ideal organization, you want the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus.
It is a very simple concept but the reality, in most organizations, does not reflect this concept.
What do you think of this metaphor? Do you think it is accurate or simplistic?
I let you read what snowdolphin has to say on this subject.
[via snowdolphin]
Agile vs. Waterfall: A Tale of Two Teams
We are using Agile methodologies at work and I was looking for ways to explain the fundamental differences between those two development methodologies. It turns out that this video is pretty good at doing just this. Enjoy...
