People don't resist change, they resist being changed. Awareness enables individual, organisational, and social transformation.
I was talking about feedback to a C-level of a startup the other day: "Criticism as feedback is a learned skill, but there are ways to warm up people to it", I said. "I don't think it's a good idea to call it criticism or negative feedback. It has quite a harsh connotation. I would... Continue Reading →
If you google "organisational change", you get 45.300.000 results. You'll drown if you dig for some practical information you can apply now. Google no more. This blog post will give you all the information you need on organisational change and resources to look into for more. As a bonus, the centrepiece of the blog post... Continue Reading →
Story 1: The Interview One hour before the interview, I changed my clothes, brushed my hair, put on some makeup (my son's having night terrors was taking a toll on my face) and prepared mentally. I checked my internet connection and Google Hangouts and ensured everything was functioning. I was ready. The interview went well... Continue Reading →
Some years ago our teams decided to commit to increasing their Agility (coming from a background of doing Scrum), with a focus on the Agile principles and living them every day. After workshops and discussions on the principles and how we can reflect them better in our work, I experimented with a model of retrospective... Continue Reading →
I've described in a previous post why the retrospective is the most important event you will run in an agile transformation. For the retrospective to fulfill its role, it needs to be effective: it has to happen in a safe space, the team needs to look into data and generate insights based on actual information... Continue Reading →
The fireball: my first feedback story It was one of my first jobs, the debut of my career. I was working for Procter & Gamble in Bucharest. The Romanian branch had just opened a procurement centre (intending to transfer all procurement activities from Brussels and Geneva), and I was employee number four of the new... Continue Reading →
Empathy and emotional intelligence are the focus of management and leadership research. Not only that but it's considered a core skill for just .. being human. The success of teaching children empathy brought the idea that adults can be taught too. Fortunately, there are a lot of tools to learn empathy, and here's one of... Continue Reading →
I've been living in Malaysia for over five years, working for a company that employs more than 60 nationalities. My first Scrum team had eight nationalities (out of eight team members) spread across all spectrums of cultural differences. My family is also multicultural (my son has Romanian-Malaysian genes, plus influences from Romanian, Chinese, Malaysian and... Continue Reading →
“All that is necessary for effectiveness is output judged acceptable by those who receive or use it, a team that winds up its work at least as capable as when it started, and members who are at least as satisfied as they are frustrated by what has transpired. The challenge is to generate ways of... Continue Reading →
Do you know all those books that teach you how to make your team great or how to push your team to rock-star performance? Toss them aside. You can't make the team great, says Harvard Professor Richard Hackman, a world-leader researcher in group performance, leadership effectiveness and self-managed teams. But, thankfully, there's a but: you... Continue Reading →
Agents of Awareness 