When I was a young manager, I read “The One-Minute Manager” by Blanchard and Johnson.  I learned to “manage by walking-around” and “catch people doing things right”.
As a motivational tool, catching people doing things right is effective.  But it doesn’t work long term if all you is praise their results.
I led the winning team on [more]

When doing risk analysis, engineers have no problem identifying potential problems – answering the “what could go wrong?” question.  The difficulty is with the mitigation plan – “How can we prevent it?”
Going over this problem in many coaching sessions, I discovered one reason why this is so
Engineers skip the middle step, of this three step [more]

Most companies have risk management processes.  And most teams follow these processes fairly well.  Why is it, that with same risk management process, some teams succeed at avoiding big problems, and while other teams fail to do so repeatedly?
I am sure there are many reasons – but I have noticed one that is not often [more]

I have a received a few “raised eyebrows” comments about my statement that people don’t listen.  A manager said to me:

“My people do listen to me”.

Do they?  Or are you just lucky?
As a young manager I used to think that what I said mattered. But it did not.  Sometimes it looked like it did: the [more]

I will be speaking in Pittsburgh on “Building High-Performance Engineering Teams“.  The event is organized by the SSIT section (Society for Social Implications of Technology)  and GOLD section (Graduates Of the Last Decade). The event is held at the Westinghouse Energy Center, Monroeville, PA (map) at 6h30 PM, Thursday May 27.
Here’s a link to the [more]

You can ask questions, or you can judge.  But you can’t do both.  You have to choose.
I previously suggested asking questions about what your team will do, instead of telling them what to do (see: Ask, Don’t tell).   But some people find it difficult to get team members to explain their views in a [more]

On November 9th, 2006, the Rutgers football team was having a bad night – but they just kept “chopping wood”.
It had started badly.  Louisville returned the opening kick-off for a touchdown.  Then Louisville could do no wrong getting 25 points before Rutgers would score on the last play before the half.  Going to the locker [more]

Team leaders readily switch to question mode, once I demonstrate that their team does not understand the objective if they simply tell them.  This is why I recommend to Ask – don’t tell.
But they raise a valid question: Isn’t it the Team Leader’s role to define the objective?  If we ask questions of team members, [more]

The biggest fallacy I have encountered in corporations is the belief that we can assign responsibilities.  Responsibility is by choice – never by assignment.
We can assign accountability, duties, even authority – but not responsibility.
Think of a parent responsible for her child.  It’s a “no excuses” kind of responsibility. You can’t force this unto others.
Accountability only [more]

Lead Engineers are promoted to Team Leaders typically because they were great at completing engineering tasks.
A new Lead Engineer will transfer the techniques that worked in managing her own work, into managing the team.  Most often, this does not work as planned.
If Lead Engineers managed their team exactly as they did their own work, it [more]