This episode is a collection of some of my favorite things. It was inspired by some similar things I shared in a recent podcast interview on How to be Awesome at your Job. Links and recommended books My mission statement and it’s theme of Ownership Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin QBQ! the Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability at Work by John G. Miller The Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM) by Hal Elrod Get up early, drink water and exercise first thing Task tracking with 4×4 Post-its and a Sharpie, Trello, or hand drawn mindmaps Working in 25 minute time blocks–free Pomodoro app Favorite challenges Decline a meeting invitation that doesn’t need you Refuse to attend a meeting if there is no agenda Collaborative meeting notes capture As the meeting facilitator be bold and ask people to own actions that belong to them Speak to what you are observing that isn’t working at a meeting Credits Pulse Rock by Kevin MacLeod Sax, Rock, and Roll by Kevin MacLeod All songs licensed under Creative Commons The post 13: Some of My Favorite Things appeared first on John Poelstra.
Listener Feedback and Questions This episode responds to listener questions and feedback from two previous episodes around how to collaboratively create meeting minutes and how a central mailing list repository for meeting minutes works. How to Invite the Right People to Your Meetings (007) Avoiding the Dreaded Meeting Roll Call (008) Discussion About Etherpad Etherpad is a collaborative text editor anyone with a web browser and and hosted instance can use. Wikipedia history of Etherpad Etherpad home page Public instances of Etherpad useful for seeing what it’s like. In the episode I incorrectly suggested that Etherpad might not be maintained any more. A quick look at the github page for etherpad-lite site does show some activity. A reading of the Wikipedia page also explains the different versions and history. Other Collaborative Document Tools Gobby Google Docs Credits Pulse Rock by Kevin MacLeod Sax, Rock, and Roll by Kevin MacLeod All songs licensed under Creative Commons The post 12: Collaborative Meeting Minutes–Listener Questions and Feedback appeared first on John Poelstra.
This episode covers some of my thoughts on a recent return from vacation and how to keep the vacation glow going for as long as possible. Nothing is more disappointing to me than watching it evaporate 30 minutes into the first day back. As you are preparing to leave Leave a clear trail of what you need to work on when you return. I like using Trello cards for this. Set your email auto-responder to start a few hours before the end of the day before you will be gone and to end a few hours into the first day after you return As you leave town (assuming you don’t need to be reached or won’t have service) set your phone to airplane mode and turn it off Don’t check your email until the day you go back to work (not the night or day before)–all the problems will still be there. “Getting a jump on things the night before” is an illusion Create a gap day by blocking out your calendar the entire day of your return–automatically decline all calendar invites if your calendar does that (Google Calendar does) When you return On the first day back, ease into things and be intentional about what you’re going to work on instead of diving head first into deleting email (avoid the illusion that it’s going to make you feel satisfied) Pack your bag and pick your clothes the night before your first day of work Read a few pages from an interesting book to center your mind Journal about what you want your day to look like and how you want to feel at the end Meditate Put clear boundaries around what you will and won’t do on that day Look at that list of things you created before you left and prioritize the attention they deserve Dealing with a pile of email Turn off the email fire hose (and sense of defeat) by setting your email client to offline after you’ve downloaded all the new messages. The world won’t end. Sort your email in different ways to identify easy to delete messages: Sort by sender… delete, delete, delete Sort by subject/thread, delete, delete, delete Reverse sort by date so that the oldest email is first (sometimes these take care of themselves) Credits Pulse Rock by Kevin MacLeod Sax, Rock, and Roll by Kevin MacLeod All songs licensed under Creative Commons The post 11: Keeping the Vacation Glow Alive Longer appeared first on John Poelstra.
You can’t know if you’re ready to release unless you know what done means. …. When you use release criteria to know when a project is done, you have taken potentially hidden decisions and made them public and clear. Make your release criteria objective and measurable, so everyone on the project knows what they’re working towards. Use the criteria as you progress through the project and up to the final release. Then you can say ‘Release it!’ with pride. — Johanna Rothman The quote above is from a fantastic white paper on the subject of release criteria. It’s an easy, accessible read and I recommend it if you’re looking to tighten up the way you make decisions for software product releases and projects in general. This episode explores the benefits for setting and agreeing to criteria before making decisions. The mindmap below outlines the points in this episode. Benefits and Uses of Release Criteria A good example of establishing release criteria is the process I kicked off in the Fedora Project back in 2009. Credits Pulse Rock by Kevin MacLeod Sax, Rock, and Roll by Kevin MacLeod All songs licensed under Creative Commons The post 10: What’s Your Criteria? appeared first on John Poelstra.
This episode talks about coaching and uses the recent Netflix documentary “I am Not Your Guru” as the the jumping off point. The documentary examines Anthony Robbins’ “Date with Destiny” event and his approach to helping people change. Topics and links covered in this episode: I am not Your Guru on Netflix The importance of restarting and Michael Hyatt’s podcast The difference between coaching vs. therapy The coach is not an an “expert” or a “guru” Rapid change is possible Sign-up for a free strategy session with John to see if coaching is a good next step for you Credits Pulse Rock by Kevin MacLeod Sax, Rock, and Roll by Kevin MacLeod All songs licensed under Creative Commons The post 9: Coaching Instant Transformation appeared first on John Poelstra.
In this episode I share a super easy way to take attendance at meetings–don’t! Instead have attendees take do their own check-in by adding themselves to the minutes (in a shared document). My meeting agendas are a shared document (which everyone at the meeting has access to) which morph into the minutes in real time as the meeting progresses. At the beginning of the meeting I remind everyone to register their presence and that’s it. This has the added bonus of avoiding the dreaded, gut wrenching “who just joined?” question that interrupts the beginning of most meetings and usually gets asked 20 times before the meeting starts. Reaching Critical Mass Once the meeting starts (and I don’t start unless I have enough people to cover some of the topics), I’m less concerned with who joins. And since I try to keep my invite lists tight it’s easy to know whether the people I really need to start are present or not. Starting on time–within a minute or two of the scheduled time–is critical. It can take a while for the culture of a meeting to change to starting on time, but I’ve found that over time people know the meeting is going to start on time and if they want to know everything that happened they’ll be on time. How This Process Works I use a shared document for the agenda that morphs into the meeting minutes or notes At the start of a meeting I tell people to indicate their presence next to their name If someone has told me before the meeting that they can’t come I put “regrets” or “PTO” or the reason they can’t attend after their name For someone that doesn’t show up or doesn’t respond to the calendar invite I put nothing after their name When the minutes go out that ambiguity is there for the reader to interpret Someone that is invited or insisted on being invited and yet there’s never any indicator after their name raises questions over time Be Clear on Names and Representation I like to put names in alphabetical order by first name and group them by role or functional team Adding the role each person plays makes it easy to spot teams that are sending too many people Always use a person’s full name Removes ambiguity as to who “John” is, even if there is one John Helps new team members really know who people are My minutes go to a central meeting minutes list where context immediately gets lost Handling People that Come Late You don’t have to say “oh, that’s okay, we were just getting started” if they just interrupted the meeting and it isn’t true Thank the the person for coming and stop there Re-enforce the value of being on time by refusing to go backwards in the agenda to re-hash a topic for the person who was late. Yes, there are obvious exceptions to this, but this is my general approach Suggest that late comers read the minutes or get with someone who was there after the meeting to get caught up I realize people have conflicts, get stuck in traffic, etc. Over time you’ll usually see a pattern of who genuinely had a problem that couldn’t be avoided and the person who lives in their own timezone. I get that we are all wired differently, but I don’t think it is fair for one person to force 15 other people into their timezone. Credits Pulse Rock by Kevin MacLeod Sax, Rock, and Roll by Kevin MacLeod All songs licensed under Creative Commons The post 8: Avoiding the Dreaded
This episode examines the process I use and suggest to decide who to invite to specific meetings. People to Invite In general, the best people to invite are those who can: Make decisions Give valuable input and insights Move things forward People Not to Invite Inviting the wrong people often drags the meeting down, makes it difficult to facilitate, and make decisions. I do not invite people to my meetings or ask them not to attend if they: Are curious to hear what is going on Can’t explain why they need to attend Can’t explain what value they will bring or ADD to the meeting Just want “keep tabs on what’s going on” If someone simply wants to be “informed” I don’t think that is a sufficient reason to attend unless the meeting minutes aren’t very good. Great meeting minutes should address all these needs. Are your minutes great? General Guidelines Set a limit of two people from a given team or function Send minutes to anyone that wants to receive them Make the minutes so good that people can substitute them for attending the meeting Keep track of each attendee and the function they represent with a “people map.” Credits Pulse Rock by Kevin MacLeod Sax, Rock, and Roll by Kevin MacLeod All songs licensed under Creative Commons The post 7: How to Invite the Right People to Your Meetings appeared first on John Poelstra.
In this episode of the podcast my friend Charlie and I talk about the frustration of status meetings. Do you like status meetings? The post 6: Status Meeting Morass appeared first on John Poelstra.
A wise person I work with made this profound statement today. You can release on time and still fail There’s a notion out there that project managers only care about making the schedule. While it’s easy to get fixated on it, the more I work on product releases the less I find myself caring about “the schedule.” This doesn’t mean it’s not important to meet the dates we’ve committed to. If a release is off track, I’m more interested in constructing a realistic schedule everyone has confidence meeting versus whipping everyone into a frenzy to meet a date simply because it’s published on a schedule. Sometimes I find that the project team loses sight of who the schedule is for. When things are going well on one of my product teams, an anonymous colleague likes to say “This should make John Poelstra happy!” or “Look we’re meeting Poelstra’s schedule.” And yet, while this person enjoys pulling my chain it really misses the point to call the schedule mine. The schedule isn’t mine simply because I’m the project manager. No, the schedule belongs to the entire release team. It’s the release team’s schedule, not the project manager’s. If you have to re-evaluate or make adjustments to the schedule, make sure it makes sense to the entire team. Have you factored in all of the important aspects of the release? Quality at sufficient levels Features complete enough to meet goals of the release Documentation complete enough to meet objectives Marketing is able to promote its What do you think of my ideas here? If you object, I’d love to hear from you. Credits Pulse Rock by Kevin MacLeod Sax, Rock, and Roll by Kevin MacLeod All songs licensed under Creative Commons The post 5: Failing by Shipping on Time appeared first on John Poelstra.
Not too long ago I was in a situation with a very limited amount of time and energy and had to make sure I used every minute and ounce of energy on the right things. Prioritization with Post-it notes and a Sharpie was the solution! Credits Pulse Rock by Kevin MacLeod Sax, Rock, and Roll by Kevin MacLeod All songs licensed under Creative Commons The post 4: Ruthless Prioritization appeared first on John Poelstra.