Articles for category: Initiative

2 days ago

Greg Thomas

I Sent it to You

The most passive sentence ever uttered when someone says “they don’t have it”. What this really means… I probably haven’t, but I didn’t read it. I’m overloaded and have no time to read it. I saw it, but chose to ignore it for other priorities. I don’t use that medium, so there is no value in it going there. Take your pick, ask the receiver which category they fall into, and then figure out your next step from there in how to work with them. “I Sent it to you” isn’t a path to making things better.

1 week ago

Greg Thomas

Skewed Adjective AI Analysis

Presentation and design have never, and will never, be my strong suit. I very much like doing all my research, gathering my notes and content, and handing it off to AI to “prettify”. Make some great infographics. Make that slide deck sing. Take my markerboard diagrams and point out the flaws. Use a consistent colour palette. All of it, yes, please. But the most annoying part is all the adjectives that get thrown around my work and other points that skew a decision, simply because I was asking a lot of questions on that one topic. Objective Analysis still holds

2 weeks ago

Greg Thomas

I Don’t Believe in Focus Time

I don’t get the concept of “Focus Time” in your calendar. I.e., signalling to everyone that this is when I’ll do work because that implies that the rest of the time that I am not working. Meetings have value when done right. Calls have value when done right. Standups have value when done right. Work has value when done right. The goal is to figure out how to stay focused and deliver. Move your meetings around. Select which ones you are going to. Drop the non-value activities. Your calendar can be lightweight but have plenty of focus time.

1 month ago

Greg Thomas

Default to Team Patterns

When you’re tired, we fall back on what we know best, what works, what is solid, what has never failed us. These are our patterns of delivery, the tried and true, the never fail. They are the work that we can do in our sleep, that we can close our eyes and let our hands move over the keyboard, succinctly with minimal effort. Patterns are what we invest our time and energy in creating, and what become the backbone of what we do. Team Patterns are much harder to create; they require knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses, who to

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