Leadership

“Leadership and Agile” – My zero-text slides from Scrum Gathering 2015

3 Comments / Agile, General, Leadership, My Agile Research / By

Top 3 takeaways: Agile environments in large organisations are unique and require effective leadership from management Management operates on transactional leadership; creates conflicts with Agile principles of empowerment It is possible for Agile teams to influence upwards; it is possible for management to adopt Agile successfully Slide 1 – Leadership is everything that comes to mind when …

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Do techpreneurs need an ecosystem that supports innovation?

2 Comments / Codefest, General, IT, Leadership / By

It’s the difference between thriving and surviving; big business and government also have a crucial role to play. I participated in a panel debate at the Innovation Summit in Cape Town today where we discussed the importance of “enabling ecosystems for innovation.” As a banker I had already been told earlier in the day that …

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Transactional leadership and Agile; conflict or contrast?

Leave a Comment / Agile, Leadership, My Agile Research / By

Also known as the management style of leadership, its principles and Agile’s seem at odds but does it really matter? Self-organising teams, building projects around individuals, giving them the environment they need and trusting them to get the job done. These are some concepts found in the principles of the Agile Manifesto, the widely accepted founding document …

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The most important question you can ask your boss

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“What are my blind spots?”; gives you new perspective, avoids danger and might help you with the 2nd most important question for your boss.. As an over-achiever you’ll be trying to please all the people all the time, and this simply isn’t possible. Your boss is the only person that has a unique perspective on …

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Are you a clock-watching boss or an output-driven leader?

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If you manage IT teams, you’ll get better results with the latter; here’s why. All roles in IT are knowledge workers, they don’t count widgets on a conveyor belt, and they know more about their job than you do. The programmer is the most extreme example of this and counting their hours will dramatically reverse productivity. I’ve …

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Don't let them drop the glass ball; Leadership and work/life balance

Leave a Comment / IT, Leadership, Personal mastery / By

Help people in your teams avoid dropping the proverbial glass ball (family); you will gain their loyalty and achieve sustainable high performance. The IT industry is renowned for long hours, deadlines and high stress; when I was in consulting we used to plan family holidays around project milestones. Balancing such demands with the needs of …

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Managing IT performance; more practice, less theory

3 Comments / Change, IT, Leadership / By

Get the best out of your technology team with these effective principles Everything depends on meaningful conversations throughout the period of evaluation (such 1:1s are part of effective team communication, learn more here). Start on a good note when you agree a performance contract up front; it will be far more significant to the person being evaluated. Active, on the …

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Milestone countdowns actually work; here's why

Leave a Comment / Change, IT, Leadership, Programme Management / By

T-40, 39, 38 isn’t just for NASA, use it on your projects and get to 3, 2, 1… success! I can still remember the go-live date: 17th June 2006. The project was a large ERP implementation across HR, Finance, Procurement and Property, our team was 100+ business and IT people delivering to 3000 users spread across numerous …

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Communicate better; your team needs it

Leave a Comment / Collaboration, Leadership / By

Authentic leadership requires effective ways of engaging people, here are some practical suggestions. A regular newsletter will cut down on email volumes if you and your management team are disciplined about compiling information about what’s happening. If your team know they get a batch of short updates in a visually appealing format every second Friday they will …

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