If we're 15 minutes into a lifeless, redundant, status-based 1:1 and I don't have anything sitting in my back pocket, I'm going to turn it into a performance review.
RandsInnovation is not born out out of a committee; innovation is a fight. It’s messy, people die, but when the battle is over, something unimaginably significant has been achieved.
RandsWatch with awe and amazement at how quickly an engineer will become totally annoyed by inefficiency.
RandsGood design isn't about making decisions for your users, it's about making those decisions irrelevant.
RandsWhen the Vent begins, you might confuse [it] for a conversation. It's not. It's a Vent. It's a mental release valve and your job is to listen for as long as it takes. Don't problem solve. Don't redirect. Don't comfort. Yet. Your employee is doing mental house cleaning and interrupting this cleaning is missing the point. They don't want a solution, they want to be heard.
RandsOne of your many jobs as manager is information conduit, and the rules are deceptively simple: for each piece of information you see, you must correctly determine who on your team needs that piece of information to do their job.
RandsI believe email-based status reports are the clearest and best signs of managerial incompetence and laziness.
RandsSnark from nerds is a leading indicator that I'm wasting their time and when I find it, I ask questions until I understand the inefficiency so I can change it or explain it.
Rands