CIO
iDEAFest2020 is a great new virtual conference, which is a new two day event that started yesterday and will end later today (April 21-22, 2020). It's a diverse set of speakers talking about Agile, process improvement, cyber security, customer experience, leadership, and many other domains. While it'
CIO
With so many in-person conferences and events cancelled, I'm excited to be presenting at iDEAFest 2020, a virtual (all online) 2 day conference on April 21 and 22. The two-day event will be all online, and only costs $99 to attend. Speakers will include: * Ty Schieber, Chair of
agile
It sometimes feels like you need lots of words/pages/slides to look/sound credible, but great communicators go through the hard work of refining their idea/message/recommendation down to a crisp, easy-to-digest message. "I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote
leadership
In computer science, the concept of a computer's processor switching from one system to another is referred to as context switching, where the computer switches from updating your gmail browser page over to your Microsoft Word application, etc. Computers are very good at this, but people are horrible
agile
So many leaders or teams quickly move too quickly (or skip entirely) the early parts of a new project/initiative, failing to invest real time in wrestling with questions like: * Should we do this project? (This question is skipped way too often -- think about investing in exercises like a
books
When I've chatted with people in the past about how to plan/manage their careers, I would often to refer to the book What Color is Your Parachute as my go-to recommendation, as it's packed with great resources (a great friend of mine referred me to
leadership
A mentor, and family friend, of mine made a great point to me years ago. He explained that people are valued (e.g. job security) and compensated based on the value that they offer their organization (that part should be obvious), and a common way to increase the value you
leadership
Many people have written great blog posts (see Seth Godin's blog) and books (see Michael Hyatt's No Fail Meetings) on the topic of planning and running meetings well. Here's a few tips on things you, as a meeting leader, should ensure: * Before the Meeting
leadership
Trillion Dollar Coach is a great read (or listen if you're an audiobook fan like me) about Bill Campbell, a football coach who pivoted mid-career into a business executive in Silicon Valley, as an executive at Apple, a CEO of Intuit, and an executive coach to Steve Jobs
leadership
It's easy for leaders, especially ones early in their careers as leaders, to struggle to see the bigger picture (instead being focused on managing/coordinating/triaging the day-to-day operations of a team/department/division (losing the forest for the trees). When that happens, inexperienced leaders may respond to
leadership
If you're a leader, being able to effectively lead the tough, important, critical, crucial, game-changing conversations is a huge piece of being able to succeed. It's certainly worth reading great resources in this area like Patterson's Crucial Conversations. When you need to have a
leadership
Most teams have a lot of recurring tasks they have to keep track of, such as an HR team doing annual benefits 'open enrollment', or an IT Service Desk team reviewing weekly automated backup status messages, or an Accounting team doing their monthly book close, or that annual