We are living in interesting times. All countries are struggling to control the COVID-19 pandemic.  Societies are challenging their histories of racial and social injustice.  Fundamental beliefs are being scrutinized. Considering how we think and understanding our cognitive biases will be essential as we adjust to this “new normal.”      What we consider to be […]

“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.” W. Edwards Deming Our work and home lives our bounded by standard operating procedures and process—and too many of them stink.  We all have encountered Byzantine-like bureaucracies where the lines are long, the rules are contradictory,  and nothing makes any sense.  Poor user experience (UX) design […]

“…when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.”  Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow In the midst of the pandemic, we have and will continue to face numerous complex decisions where there are many unknowns and no clear choices.  Organizations and individuals are grappling with challenging issues.  […]

Feedback is a critical and valuable management tool.  For managers, it is the engine of continuous improvement.   For employees, it is the gift of valuable insight.  Unfortunately, many managers feel uncomfortable giving regular feedback, which deprives them of the ability to affect change.  And, many employees mistake feedback as criticism and miss the message.  The […]

Productivity is defined as our ability to create value.  Traditionally manufacturers and farmers became more productive by adding resources—people and machines—to the process.  Knowledge workers can generate more value by working smarter, rather than harder.  The massive shift to remote work caused by the pandemic has exposed complexities and inefficiencies in how we work.  Through […]

The coronavirus pandemic is the most frightening, disruptive, and widespread crisis of our lifetime.  As managers and leaders, none of us have faced challenges of such a magnitude or scale.  Over the next several weeks and probably months, our teams will look to us for guidance, support, and leadership.  In this article, I draw from […]

Many organizations struggle with project governance, oversight, and control.  The truth is that most projects are not successful.   Over the past 25-years, only 30% of all projects are delivered on-time, on-budget, and with the desired scope.  Traditional waterfall projects have phase gates that theoretically establish defined control and governance points.  The project must complete the […]

Disciplined Agile (DA) has the potential to become a leading agile framework because it creates harmony in this congested thought-space.  DA recognizes practices from across the spectrum and offers a pragmatic and context-driven approach to agility. Currently, DA is not widely used.  In the State of Agile Report,  it does not make the list of […]

Agile teams using the Scrum framework commit to delivering value in each development sprint.  Sprints are generally 2-weeks long, and the goal is to create working software that can be deployed into production.  While commitment is one of Scrum’s core values,  in reality, teams do not always complete the work.  This is commonly known as […]

Managers and project managers are often told that “engaging stakeholders” is critical to success.  However, they rarely receive guidance on what it means or how to “engage your stakeholders.”  It is similar to when I started practicing yoga, the teacher told us to “release our sacrum.”  I had no idea that I had a sacrum, […]