The Mindset

A few years ago, I tried to introduce a systematic code and design review process to the organization I worked for. For months, I repeatedly received the same answer: “We know this is a good idea, but our developers won’t like the idea of their code being read by their colleagues. And anyway, we really […]

It’s not my habit to regularly quote other authors just for the sake of quoting, but this is not the first time I’m quoting J. Timothy King (and probably not the last).
This great text is from his article Moving Chairs and Why It’s Cool. I found it to be so accurate, thought-provoking and well-written, […]

In Organizational Under Currents and More On Underwater Currents I wrote about how the people who are actually doing most of the work express the real organizational culture – the subtext of organizational culture. The written procedures, the metrics, and the things which are being said publicly are only the tip of the iceberg. In many, […]

As a service to my readers, a high-resolution version of the manager’s pledge (aka step 5) is available here.
Don’t forget to put it where you can see it every day!

Warning: delicate issue ahead…
Kathy Sierra wrote a great article about Top Management Lies. Why is it great? First because it’s funny. Second, because most of us know deep inside that it is not fiction. Most of you know exactly what she talks about. The rest of you are extremely lucky (and this post is probably not […]

In yet another great article J. Timothy King describes the importance of passion at work, how it motivates people and make them do great things. The last section in this article is titled Don’t take it for granted:

“When we take passion for granted, we discourage the best motivator we have.”
No one should stay indifferent when […]

Is there one? Well, that depends of course on where you work and who you work for.
Sometimes, what you and I might define as professionalism is far from being appreciated. If the organizational subtext does not promote professionalism, you might find yourself being tagged as a trouble maker just for trying to do things […]

Another insight about organizational underwater currents:
The variation in how different people within the same organization perceive a certain issue is by itself an interesting finding.
You can learn a lot about the organizational culture by comparing the way different people live a certain aspect of the organization and react to it. Sometimes this variance is derived from […]

Well, the Israeli elections are over, and the results took (almost) everyone by surprise. Small parties, which no one thought will get into the parliament, managed to sweep the public, and now have a significant electoral power.
The interesting story is that no pre-elections poll managed to anticipate this immense movement of voters from their traditional parties […]

A general term referring to any activity done to address an unexpected problem revealed at a highly inconvenient time, although it should have been anticipated and handled earlier.
Psychologists who studied closely the software industry found out that working in a crisis mode usually brings the best out of people. A group of researches from Boston […]