Leadership Insights Blog by Peter Alkema
Don't let them drop the glass ball; Leadership and work/life balance
By Peter Alkema |
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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How to run a successful codefest
By Peter Alkema |
Putting a group of software developers together to build prototypes requires planning; here’s how In many ways a codefest is like a conference – like minded people getting together for a couple of days with a schedule of various activities. All the logistics of running such an event need to be covered and it’s preferable to get a professional …
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Winning the war for IT talent
By Peter Alkema |
How do you find and recruit top technical skills? If you have sufficient vacancies, hire or retain someone who has a track record of sourcing IT talent and give them everything they need to do it even better. The people you really want are unlikely to have their CVs in the market so you need to find them …
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Managing IT performance; more practice, less theory
By Peter Alkema |
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
By Peter Alkema |
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
By Peter Alkema |
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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IT should spend more time on the road with sales
By Peter Alkema |
I recently joined my sales colleagues on some client visits – here’s why I plan to do this a lot more. If you are building software for the external customers of your company then you shouldn’t only rely on secondary feedback from the people who visit them. IT teams supporting internal systems have easy access to their customers – they …
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Bias for thoughtful action
By Peter Alkema |
This powerful concept arose in a recent leadership meeting, but what does it mean? We are often told there are 2 kinds of people in this world; those that make things happen and those that watch things happen. I’ve always tried to be in the former category but my leadership journey is teaching me it’s …
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Make action lists work for you
By Peter Alkema |
I’ve used a simple method for most of my career; here it is. While I actively use the latest technology to make my life easier and actually do the work that is expected of me, I’m certainly not paperless when it comes to taking notes in meetings and managing my actions. Confession: In this modern …
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Your people on the move – what's your move?
By Peter Alkema |
Everyone leaves at some point. How do you lead through the change? Rule #1: Never try and hold on to good people who have simply decided to make a career change within the company. They will feel restricted, demotivated and eventually leave anyway. Get over your feelings, look them in the eye and genuinely wish …
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Never pass up an opportunity to keep your mouth shut
By Peter Alkema |
This great quote by Robert Newton Peck is a constant reminder: less is truly more. We are all guilty; while appearing to listen to the other person we are actually just thinking of our own reply. Do we truly participate in meaningful dialogue any more – verbal communication has become a ritual, a necessity to …
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Don't Send That Email
By Peter Alkema |
Either pick up the phone, apply the 24 hour rule or do something differently. When I learnt to drive I remember being told, “if you hesitate, stop” and this is true in the jam packed highway of corporate email. Millions of largely inconsequential written messages flood all of our inboxes every day but surprisingly few …
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