If you’ve never seen that classic video narrated by Derek Sivers, watch it now. There’s a lesson here for teams. We should strive to respond to vulnerability with vulnerability. If you can’t be the first person to be vulnerable, then always, always, always be the second. If you don’t…

I read a post called The Tail End by Tim Urban yesterday. Tim talks about how, if he lives to be 90, then he has about 56 Super Bowls left to watch, 300 books left to read, or 20 more Red Sox games to watch in person. Then he gets…

I see the same two problems over and over with discussion meetings: The group spends the whole time talking about just one or two topics, leaving lots of important stuff untouched The group talks about whatever got brought up first instead of what is most important Lean Coffee is a…

The book The Unicorn Project by Gene Kim has a great section on core vs. context in business. Apparently it traces back to Dealing with Darwin by Geoffrey Moore. Core creates lasting durable business advantage, whereas context is everything else. …

One of my favorite team retrospective activities is what I call the “I Suck” awards. It’s simple. Here’s the process: Step 1: Someone kicks it off by saying why they suck at that moment Step 2: The rest of the team laughs or empathizes or whatever the situation calls for …

Alton Brown famously hates single use kitchen gadgets, which he calls unitaskers: And yet the Unix philosophy says that programs should “do one thing and do it well.” Why does it work for command line tools but not kitchen gadgets? (You may say “uh, because kitchen gadgets have nothing…

The book The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle starts out with a fascinating example of a bad apple. Here’s a big quote, but I promise it’s worth it. Meet Nick, a handsome, dark-haired man in his twenties seated comfortably in a wood-paneled conference room in Seattle with three other people…

Let’s start with some definitions: Introverts (or those of us with introverted tendencies) tend to recharge by spending time alone. They lose energy from being around people for long periods of time, particularly large crowds. Extroverts, on the other hand, gain energy from other people. Extroverts actually find their energy…

Learning is the goal of experiments. The only failed experiment is the one that doesn’t teach you anything. So if you’re so afraid of failing that you don’t want to try, run an experiment. There’s nothing to fear when the goal is to learn. If being wrong fills you with shame, run an experiment. There’s no shame where there’s no failure. Stop changing, start experimenting. Originally published at http://critter.blog on October 26, 2020.