Partnership & Possibilities

As part of my commitment to my own professional development, a few months ago I attended a certification training program on effective practices in organizational change and leadership development. Although it required more time commitment than usual on my part, I found the experience well worth it. I would make the same decision again if […]

“Our experience thus far has been that while self-organizing teams may enable the organization to operate from day to day without active management, a more integrated organization and more productive teams make the value-add of managers highly transparent and place a premium on specific leadership skills.” from Adam Light, Chris Vike and Diana Larsen. “Teamwork […]

December 12 & 13
8:30 am – 5:30 pm
Hotel Vintage Plaza
422 SW Broadway, Portland, OR 97205
Price:  $1750 per participant*
Group Rate:  Register 3 or more participants at $1550 per person
REGISTER
The workshop is limited to 18 participants, so make sure to reserve your spot soon!
Course Overview 
Managers have a unique role to fulfill in an Agile world. Whether leading a shift […]

Team member: How will we know when we’ve found an impediment? What do they look like?
Sponsor: How can I know what impediments block our teams’ productivity?
Scrum Master: How can I get the team to mention impediments in our daily meeting and retrospectives?
Product Owner: Why is everyone whining about impediments? Why don’t we just get […]

In a article at the Six Sigma IQPC site, Christian Loyer offers a new twist on the old fishbone diagram root cause analysis approach.
He describes the usual application of a fishbone diagram for digging in to solve a problem. In addition to Ishikawa’s Ms for manufacturing fishbones that Christian mentions, I’ve also used Ps […]

Martin Jul writes about a retrospective activity in the post “Retrospectives - Adapting to Reality.” He describes an interesting process for highlighting issues in the Generating Insights part of a retrospective session.
In this activity we mark out three sections on a whiteboard:
“DO” is where we put the things we should do or keep doing. […]

Today I invented a phrase (at least I think I invented it because I haven’t heard anyone else say it): “Avoidable Heroism.”
I invented it in response to a question, “Should my team work on the weekend to meet a commitment made under their control?”
Now, I don’t know the background behind this question. Maybe it’s […]

I’m attending Agile 2010. Are you?
If you’re serious about adopting, grounding, or extending Agile mental models, values, principles, methods, and practices where you work, you’ll find answers to your current concerns, and stimulate new questions to consider, at Agile 2010. With 214 sessions ranging across 5 days and 16 thematic stages, you’re sure […]

While in Washington D.C. last month, for the first time I visited the U.S. Library of Congress. Guided by writer and experienced LoC researcher David Schmaltz, I received a temporary library card to research early management thought.
In the glorious reading room under its amazing dome, I held two precious books. One, an (out of […]

Lately I’ve reinforced my interest in learning to learn. I get several benefits from it. First, I learn how to learn better for my own purposes. Second, I learn more about how other people learn. Third, if I apply what I learn about how other people learn, I can become a better consultant/coach/trainer. And, magically, […]