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1027 days ago

As you can tell, I haven't contributed to this blog since early October. If you are visiting this blog for the first time, or getting this post through your favorite RSS reader, I have some great news. Though I don't have immediately plans to continue with this blog (though I won't say never), I have started a new blog called Leaning towards agility. Take a look at the introduction and it should give you the information you need. I hope you find the new blog interesting and can't wait to start the conversation!

Taking a break

1151 days ago

To my readers, Thanks for these last 20 months as you have listened to my Random Thoughts every week. You have helped me confirm that my thoughts aren't alone in the universe, and for that I am grateful. I hope that in some way I have made a difference in your lives, at least make you think about things in a new light. For me, that is reward enough. Over the last few months, I haven't been able to put the quality time that I needed to with this blog because of other priorities in my life that needed my attention. In addition, I feel that I have covered most areas that I believe would be an interest in others. Therefore, I have decided to take a "sabbatical" from blogging for an indefinitely amount of time. I am not sure if I will come back to this blog later on, stop blogging completely, redesign the site, or start something entirely different. What I do know is that I need to take a break from this and figure it all out. I have made many friends along the way ...

Everybody should think about improvements!

1152 days ago

Traditionally, process improvement has come down from management. It's expected that this is part of management's job, to keep check on the status quo and determine when things aren't working and fix them. Management assumes that as well, and is always trying to find ways to improve without having impact to others in the organization. Even if individuals who are "feeling the pain" with the inefficiency are discourgaged to help, and told to "focus on their jobs" and leave it up to management to improve. Management ends up taking on the entire burden of improving the orgranization on their own. As a result, because they don't have the bandwidth to improve everything they end up choosing areas of most pain. The danger is that they aren't looking at the whole picture, and may be treating the symptom and not the cause. At best, this only helps things temporarily, as the cause is still out there and will eventually hit a new threshold to cause other ...

Let Your People Learn!

1153 days ago

I have learned a long time ago that as a manager (or a parent for that matter) you can be overprotective and micromanage trying to ensure that the people you work with don't make mistakes. Especially those mistakes that you have experienced in your lifetime. However, all of your hard work cannot keep mistakes from happening. It is inevitable. By being overprotective and micromanaging you are robbing people of the very thing that keeps mistakes from happening in the future - by learning from your mistakes. If you are going to help people not make mistakes, they need to understand what they did wrong and try to figure out how they will avoid the mistake in the future. They can only truly understand and want to make correction if they experience it firsthand. They may understand that the stove is hot and can hurt you, but to truly value that advice they may need to touch the stove to find out. Despite your best intentions on keeping them away from the stove, they may test ...

Learning Fest of 2006

1156 days ago

Ok, that's not really the name of it but Rosa Say over at Talking Story has had her annual event regarding learning. This year her community of AWESOME people (who in their own right have awesome blogs) focused on the value of learning. This has been going on throughout the month of September and in today's post she provided links to every post with commentary. She also threw in some outside posts that she discovered during the month on the topic. There is a wealth of information here to keep you busy for some time. Thanks Rosa, and keep doing what you are doing! Here's the main link.