3 Essential Skills for Engineering Managers
Most engineering managers got promoted into management by being good engineers. But the skills that made the promotion happen aren’t the skills that lead to… Read More
5 Common Mistakes When Answering Questions Under Pressure (And How to Avoid Them)
You’re in a meeting with the senior stakeholders for your project. You’ve just finished your presentation, and you’re feeling good about it—you did the work… Read More
The One Thing You Control In Every Meeting
If you’re like most people in business today, your calendar is probably packed with meetings. In these newsletters and on the Humanizing Work Show,… Read More
Asking Why Without “Why”
With their Five Whys, Toyota made asking “why?” the go-to root cause analysis technique. Author Simon Sinek got famous for telling leaders to “Start… Read More
Decision Making in Consensus Driven Cultures
Consensus cultures offer two significant advantages over highly directive ones. First, considering multiple perspectives often leads to better decision outcomes. Second, when people are invited… Read More
Does Agile Make You Faster?
It’s trendy to say “Agile doesn’t make you faster” with the implication that it’s wrong for a leader to even care about “faster.” You see… Read More
Three Approaches to Goals
Setting goals can make or break your team’s success. In this article, we explain three distinct types of team goals—OKRs, Health Metrics, and Exploratory Goals—and… Read More
Our Favorite Prioritization Question
Whether you’re trying to plan your day or trying to get stakeholders to prioritize features, the temptation to say, “It’s all important,” is strong. Read More
Why Most Teams Underperform
When we say a team is underperforming, it can evoke visions of a bad manager berating a team to try to force them to work… Read More
Don’t Put That In Your Backlog
The single biggest mistake that teams make with their backlogs and individuals make with their todo lists happens to be the most natural thing to… Read More