lessons-learned
Growing up, my father had a few mantra that he would repeat over and over again for my sister and me. One of them was: Always return things to the way you found them When I would borrow my Dad's tools to take a part something (hopefully something
CIO
Way back in 2009, NIST released a 20 page document that is a great set of fundamental recommendations for small business cyber/information security. * NISTIR 7621 Small Business Information Security: The Fundamentals There's certainly many more things you should be doing, but it's a great place
faith
Kathleen and I just got back from a mission trip to Somotillo, Nicaragua where we served local villages, schools, and churches. The trip was coordinated and run by Because We Care Ministries (BWMC). Kathleen and I went down with 6 people from Portico Charlottesville and 16 midshipmen (men and women)
leadership
Have you ever noticed how when something is simplified enough that it doesn't intimidate people, people start to have a lot more opinions? It makes sense that people who aren't rocket scientists shouldn't make recommendations on rocket ship designs. But as complexity is reduced,
CIO
The military classifies some missiles as "fire and forget" because they don't need to be monitored after they are fired. Great leaders are like this -- their boss can give them an objective and know they don't need to follow up over and over
CMMI
There are a lot of ways you can measure and categorize organizational maturity. I'm sure there are several classes you can take on it if you get a MBA. The CMMI Institute, as an example, talks about how organizations move from being managed, to defined, to starting to
leadership
Several years ago, near the beginning of my professional career, I was a junior engineer helping with the design and issuance of new access badges for a campus of employees where I worked. Thousands of employees would be getting new badges, they would wear it around their neck on a
lessons-learned
A few years ago, we did a team building exercise at work which involved the group collaborating on a vague project with no defined roles for any of us. I think exercise was intended to show how different personality types could better collaborate, though I learned a very different lesson.
lessons-learned
This may be obvious to people, and it's probably near useless now that everyone has a GPS in their car or on their smartphone; but if you want to turn around and go the opposite direction on the highway, you should take the second exit. The first exit
leadership
I've been working some long days recently, trying to balance some big projects at work. I love the excitement and intensity that comes from leading big change, whether it's setting up a new system or process, or chasing a big opportunity. But I often need to
lessons-learned
Apparently Robert Havighurt wrote a book in 1952 that popularized the concept of teachable moments. I've never heard of Mr. Havighurt, nor his book, but fortunately my father taught me all about teachable moments. When I was learning to drive, my father insisted on logging many, many hours
lessons-learned
I was at a Subway recently, where I (very) often grab a sandwich during the work week, and a guy in line started a conversation with me, complimenting me on talking to each of the sandwich artists. We talked about how people so rarely take the time or energy to