It is a beautiful Friday, birds chirping, sun out, window open at 6:30 am. Putting the final touches on The Collaboration Equation with Tonianne and my editor. Should get the book cover in a few days and beginning layout by late next week. This paragraph from the book is why…

Every day, your team goes to work and creates defects. You can call them mistakes, bugs, technical debt, rework, or any other glossy phrase, but they are all defects. They are created by your team, doing your work without enough information. In construction, if people go to work uninformed, they…

We hurt ourselves, every day. We divide into teams, the teams become silos, the silos become overloaded, the overload makes us double-down on our silos. Sigh. This is extremely common, it is natural in a system built from the ground up to be divided. We divide into specialties, into…

This is part 5 of a series of 5 posts, see the mother post here. We want to grow as professionals. We want our products to be better, our know-how to be deeper, our impact to be known and recognized. This is impossible without continuous improvement. I have met many…

Getting work to work — This is part 4 of a series of 5 posts, see the mother post here. In Lean there is Mura, the waste of unevenness. It’s probably the most important, but also most overlooked, in the waste theatre. For knowledge work, unnevenness primarily interrupts flow. It’s when you have work that…

Understanding each other as professionals — This is part 3 of a series of 5 posts, see the mother post here. Professionalism as an end allows quality product as an end. Respect is an abused word. Weak minds use it as a placeholder for fear. Weak egos will demand it up front. …

Everything we do at work is a relationship. — This is part 2 of a series of 5 posts, see the mother post here. When we work together, which we all do, everything involves relationships. People request work from other people… that is a relationship. People take jobs that involve bosses and structure … those are relationships. People form teams to…

All Work Is Turning Ideas into Products — This is part 1 of a series of 5 posts, see the mother post here. Individuals work in teams to provide value. We focus on the work, we focus on the teams, but we rarely focus on the individuals. What does an individual professional need to be fully engaged, enthusiastic, and ready to take on new challenges? …

Towards Humanistic Collaborative Management — The strength of Lean Thinking and an Agile Mindset is that at heart they are both about continuous improvement. People want to, need to, improve. We need to get better at what we do, see increasing impact, and know we are making a difference. If this is a core human…