Productive Business Meetings

Here are some suggestions for making business meetings more productive, efficient and effective. Based on readers’ feedback, I have split this article into the following separate blog posts. Use these Posted Signs for Productive Meetings in your meeting rooms and offices Consider using this template for requesting a meeting Consider using this format for your weekly… Continue reading Productive Business Meetings

A Memo on Leadership by a Colleague

I regularly ask other people for their advice, insights and knowledge about leadership and management. The following is a memo a colleague recently wrote for me on the subject. [memo begins] Loose your ego Leadership isn’t about you or what you can do and rarely are people motivated to make you look good. Itâ s… Continue reading A Memo on Leadership by a Colleague

Organizing a Digital Technology Department in a Media Company By Functional Areas

This article presents a system to organize your digital technology department in a media company. It is written for a CTO, CIO or EVP Technology looking for suggestions on organizing or reorganizing your Digital (Web, Mobile) technology department. It is best suited for you if your organization has the following characteristics: You manage all aspects… Continue reading Organizing a Digital Technology Department in a Media Company By Functional Areas

Confidence in Leaders & Managers and Their Performance: Reinforcing Loop

When stakeholders, executives and team members have confidence in the abilities of a leader/manager, it results in their lending greater support to that leader/manager. It also tends to make them more forgiving of mistakes made by the leader. Both of these things result in better performance, effectiveness and results from the leader. That, in turn… Continue reading Confidence in Leaders & Managers and Their Performance: Reinforcing Loop

Some Pathways for Career Development in a Product Engineering Organization

The diagram below illustrates some pathways for career development in an engineering-focussed product development organization. It shows an organization where software engineering is a major discipline. The pathways shown here map out career paths that we have seen work well in a number of organizations. (There are also other pathways that work well that are not… Continue reading Some Pathways for Career Development in a Product Engineering Organization

Trinity Method of Technology Management

In the Trinity Method of Technology Management, tasks and responsibilities are categorized under three types of roles: Creator, Guardian and Recycler. If you are the CTO or VP of Technology at an organization, your team needs to do three things effectively and regularly: Innovate; improve; create new products, features, services & processes Operate; maintain; execute… Continue reading Trinity Method of Technology Management

CAREER-CLEAR: An Employee Evaluation and Career Development System

CAREER-CLEAR is a system for doing fair, consistent and constructive employee performance evaluations and determining employee rank, title and compensation. It is meant to be used by supervisors to identify areas for improvement for their employees and to guide their career growth. Employees are scored in a total of 5 categories. Upto 10 points can… Continue reading CAREER-CLEAR: An Employee Evaluation and Career Development System

Benefits of Using IRC or Group Chat & Video Conference During Incident Management

When a team of engineers is dealing with a real-time incident, such as a system outage, troubleshooting a problem or dealing with a malicious hacking attack, having excellent communications is critically important. The appropriate communications tool can make a world of difference in dealing with the issue and learning from it afterwards. As important as… Continue reading Benefits of Using IRC or Group Chat & Video Conference During Incident Management

Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team

For an executive, having a management team of people who are good at their jobs and work well with each other is one of the most important factors that lead to success together. Observing a number of successful projects, I realized that it is critical that your management team members care for each other, work… Continue reading Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team

Organizing a Digital Technology Department of Medium Size in a Media Company

There are many good ways to organize your technology department. This article presents some of them. It is written for a CTO or VP Technology leading a medium size department looking for suggestions on organizing or reorganizing your Digital (Web, Mobile) technology department. It is best suited for you if your organization has the following… Continue reading Organizing a Digital Technology Department of Medium Size in a Media Company