Articles for category: Leadership

4 weeks ago

Greg Thomas

Free Lunch

I like Free Lunch. I don’t read too much into it – pizza is pizza, sandwiches are sandwiches, burgers are burgers. It’s a fun time to hang out and chat with people. From a manager’s point of view, it takes nothing to create this environment – $100 – $150 – depending on the size of your team, if you look at what they earned you in OT this week, you’re still saving $4k. Sometimes you work for a place that doesn’t have $4k, but they have $150 to say thanks. I don’t think a free lunch replaces your salary, but

1 month ago

Greg Thomas

What Your Team Needs

It’s not an easy time to be leading teams these days. If you’re running a software team, here are some things I’d be considering; Yes, AI is here, let’s focus on what we have to do and how we can leverage it. Let’s focus on the value we create in our work. Working on legacy code?  Great, there is a need for that, but our plan will be to move forward and remove it. Are there areas for automation we should investigate to help the team work better? The team works better when it is moving as one, when concerns

1 month ago

Greg Thomas

AI Leadership

AI will give you steps on how to lead people, but it’s not in there doing the hard work, the in-the-trenches work, the back and forth with the team member who is struggling. It’s not in their thinking about how to motivate them, and looking at how they acted, what their body language was, the tone of their voice, or everything going on in their life. Yes, AI is going to give you suggestions, plans, and worksheets, but it’s not going to get in there and do the face-to-face that’s still needed to help someone grow and learn. That’s on

1 month ago

Greg Thomas

Too Many Hiding Spots

I have an issue with repositories, source control, and JIRA projects that are scattered to the heavens. It’s easy for people to hide. They can say they are working on something, but not be and it’s because they are hidden in a project, somewhere, that no one knows about. Reduce the hiding spots, increase the visibility.

1 month ago

Greg Thomas

Check Engine Light

Your software needs a “Check Engine” light – it’s getting harder to maintain, it doesn’t work as well as it used to, or it’s hard to understand. Better yet, have an engine light for your team. Does everyone know how our software works and what we do? Do we have a scalable group, and are they growing? It should flash red in your eyes, and like your car make you pause. The problem is we don’t, so we keep driving along until it blows up.  

© 2025 Rambli by Greg Thomas. All rights reserved.