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Tag Archives: management

Leader in the Land of Dilemmas Part Two: Context

13 Jun

Episode 108 

In the previous episode, we started a new adventure — a new series: Leader in the Land of Dilemmas. We looked into the mind of a leader wandering in a fog. We climbed together to the peak of the leader’s loneliness. When standing at the crossroads, we had a moment of reflection on what a Dilemma actually is. Ultimately, we reached the Oracle hut and found a mysterious device — the imaginary magic decision-making box.

We must consider what constitutes the input before attempting to produce an output from the device. What are the factors that we have to consider? What is the decision-making context?  

Situation 

First of all, and the core context is, what happened? What’s the origin of our dilemma, and why do we have to decide in the first place? Perhaps a project manager comes and says that our team member screwed up. Perhaps a client is unhappy with a person’s performance on our team. Maybe a person is dissatisfied with the work and wants to quit. One person claims it’s impossible to work with someone else. A conflict in the team. A problem with the production environment. Difficult 1-on-1 talk incoming. Giving someone a second or third chance after being sacked from yet another team.

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Posted by on June 13, 2024 in Leadership

 

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Leader in the Land of Dilemmas Part One: Intro 

09 Apr

Episode 107

Ah, long time no see, adventurer! Let’s start with a summary and some news. In a few previous episodes, we discussed generational differences amongst people in IT, as well as various personality types and how to deal with them consistently meddling with soft skills and leadership topics. There has been a little pause in my writing since then, but I was quite busy compensating for this by talking! After the pandemic hiatus, I returned to conferences, meetups, and webinars in March 2023 with a new energy, produced three talks based on articles published here, and delivered them at 21 events total in 2023.

I did a bit of reorganization on related parts of the blog as well. You can find the list of events and further confirmed plans on the Talks and Tour page. Each talk now has its own page with abstracts, details, slides, and recordings, both in English and Polish, whenever available. If you have watched any of those, please let me know your thoughts – feedback is incredibly important for any public speaker.

A New Adventure

There is also a fourth new talk, that I just finished working on, I delivered on one external event so far, and I’ve been scheduled for two more events. All my previous talks were based on, or intertwined with, an article or multiple articles, so this is what I’m going to do now as well – write a series of articles to back up the newest talk. The name of the talk is, “Leader in the Land of Dilemmas.” We have a lot to discuss! Should we care more about people or the customer? Treat everyone equally or according to needs? Quick decisions or democracy? What factors should be taken into account when making difficult decisions? How do you navigate the meanders of different personalities, organizations, and a changing business environment? How do you balance time, money, and emotions while maintaining internal consistency?

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Posted by on April 9, 2024 in Leadership

 

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Archetypes of Developers Part Two

06 Jan

Episode 104

In the previous episode we started with four personality types dating back to antiquity, today known best under DISC theory, color-coded as Red, Yellow, Green and Blue and RPG-coded as Fighter, Bard, Druid and Wizard.

Today, we are going to take a closer look at the introverted spectrum of our fellowship – Druids and Bards, and look for synergies, different paths to reach a goal and the perfect party.

The Green Druid

Druids are the Stable type. They are on the introverted, calm and passive side but are interested in relations and people. Just not too many people at once and not for too long. They are team players -they care about others, and like to help, support, develop, heal, repair and restore. They hate conflicts so they try to de-escalate the situation or back off if things go too far. They speak much less than Yellows which leaves space for listening and they listen carefully and empathically. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on January 6, 2023 in Leadership, Technology

 

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Archetypes of Developers Part One

11 Dec

Episode 103

Have you ever had this thought that you are surrounded by people who fundamentally don’t understand you? They may seem to be listening but just don’t get it? Or they don’t even try? They do everything wrong, too slow, too rapid, too messy? Are they just weird or over the top? Sometimes you would say that you are surrounded by idiots. Sounds familiar? Excellent, you came to a good place. 

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In this episode, we continue to stray from technicalities into people’s territory. We will talk about four main personality types you can encounter in your fellowship, work, and life: Reds – bold and fierce Fighters who get things done no matter the casualties; Yellows – inspiring and charming Bards with an aura of enthusiasm and loud mouths; Greens – calm and loyal Druids who make sure everyone is okay while resisting all changes and Blues – analytical and distant Wizards who have an eye for details but sometimes just kill all the fun. We will see how to leverage their strengths, how to live with their weaknesses, how to Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on December 11, 2022 in Leadership, Technology

 

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Web API Design Part Ten: Management

20 Dec

Episode 96

It’s been a while, but I’m back with the next installment of API design series. Today we will step away a bit from technicalities and jump into the business perspective. After all, API is a product and needs to be treated as such. As we discussed one year ago in the first chapter of our journey, API is for developers as a graphical user interface is to regular software users. It’s a gateway to business value. And there are quite a lot of issues going around the product to think about and to be aware of.

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Image by Cosmic Net Studios

API management is a process of creating, publishing, enforcing usage policies, taking care of subscribers, analyzing the traffic and monetizing our product. API is as successful as developers who build upon it. Much of API management effort is directed towards empowering developers that use the API and simplify their work as much as possible. Some aspects of API management are more technical than others and with the rise of API management platforms this tendency increases, as more features are delegated to the platform. We will focus on Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on December 20, 2018 in API, Technology

 

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