Doing the Unthinkable

Happy Friday!Somehow, we went from winter to waking up one morning to Spring and all of the allergies that come with it. I almost never get allergies, and I don't know how anyone lives with them.If that weren't bad enough, I also agreed to take some...

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Apr 19, 2024
Values, Principles, and Tactics

Happy Friday!"I need to get a better sense of our group's capacity," is a common request clients have of me. While answering this question is not really very interesting, I think the existence of the request is and the topic of today's email.One reas...

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Apr 05, 2024
The Model Paradox

Happy Friday!Yesterday, I went and split my beehives. This was actually the first time I did this, so while the process seemed normal, it was a little challenging since it was my first time.To prepare for this, I re-read some old material and looked...

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Mar 29, 2024
Models and Measures

Happy Friday!One of the things I've done my whole career is try to quantify the impact of improvements.I distinctly remember obsessing over the size of the iPhone app builds I created and working hard to optimize the assets to keep the size below a c...

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Mar 22, 2024
Boundaries of Change

Happy Friday,Why is change so hard?One reason is that it takes time for folks to adjust to a new condition, and that time of adaptation is often unpleasant.Another reason, and the one I want to talk about today, is that we don't often pay attention t...

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Mar 15, 2024
Data Analytics Trap

Happy Friday,Earlier this week, a friend showed me a video in which a CIO explained how they view setting up analytics for an organization. In a nutshell, they said that while people mostly understand it as five high-level steps, he cautioned that cr...

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Mar 08, 2024
Is assuming positive intent enough?

Happy Friday,Today, my son won an award at school for exemplifying one of the character attributes they're trying to teach. The award was for assuming positive intent. As the principal explained positive intent to the school and parents, I had to hid...

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Feb 23, 2024
Team Structures and Efficiency Aren't Intuitive

Happy Friday!There's a very long-standing topic that folks have pretty strong opinions on, but rarely have I seen much consensus around, and that is how to organize teams and groups.I thought I'd write a bit about the topic from what I've measured an...

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Feb 16, 2024
Know Your Target 🎯

Happy Friday,I've been busy applying to conferences, and there is a topic that I feel I'm perfectly suited to speak on, but I always hesitate to submit the talk. The talk is about how to build really good teams that build bug-free software in 1/3rd o...

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Feb 09, 2024