For the first few years of my career, I wasted a lot of my time and energy doing things the hard way. I should be honest and admit that a big part of me still does things the hardest way possible. A part of me believes that if I can succeed in unfavo...

If you’ve spent any amount of time in the software world, you bump into what is sometimes called the magic quadrants. You’ll most often see this as an effort/impact activity. I want to share two ways I use this little technique when helping groups be...

I was sitting down having my coffee this morning and thinking of all the stuff that goes on in most companies that I simply don’t have to deal with, and one thing came to the forefront of my mind. Today, I want to write about one of those lessons lea...

Two well-known books where leadership and software intersect are The Phoenix Project and The Goal. These books are novelizations of a company that redeems itself by leveraging the Theory of Constraints. While The Phoenix Project is very much a take o...

In my last article, I went through a few frameworks and mentioned how there are plenty of Scrum Masters eager to prove themselves. They are a peculiar role in most companies, and many Scrum Masters struggle to answer the question, “What is it you do...

If I were to ever write an article that would prompt an argument online, this is the one. There is so much noise and hand-wringing about the one true agile framework that it is impossible to make sense of things. Sadly that puts our community in a po...

I recently finished a book that another consultant recommended called Spin Selling. Many of us consultants are really good at what we consult on but not so great at marketing and selling. So when someone recommends a book to help me improve, I’m all...

I try to focus my writing on presenting a situation or problem and a way to move forward from it. In this article, I’m going to only focus on the problematic beliefs I encounter in organizations and individuals. The entire point of this little articl...

Many organizations I consult with wish they could move faster. These organizations also cite how long it takes to make simple decisions as a huge bottleneck and would love to find ways to remove or expedite the decisions.

I work with lots of leaders in companies ranging from Fortune 10 to start-ups, and there are two skills that many leaders struggle with, and I wanted to talk through those in this article.