If you are an agile software development practitioner or have worked in the industry around these practices, you are free to skip ahead. This chapter is meant as an introduction to all things agile, lean, and product/service innovation for those who are unfamiliar with the terms, values, practices, and philosophy. It is a tough chapter… Read more ..read more

My interaction with an "ally" when asking him to credit my work where he was posting about it -- spoiler alert, I did not get credit and he was not an ally ..read more

Team activity to establish trust and get teams through the storming phase together ..read more

Being replaceable in work may not seem like a good thing. But I definitely think it can be. Those who disagree tend to think about replaceability in a negative sense. Who wants to think there is someone else out there that can do your job as well (or better) than you? A lot of this comes from a scarcity mindset: that there are only a set number of jobs and once they are taken that's it. But new jobs are created all the time as long as there is a case that demands it ..read more

I’m a competitive person by nature - everyone would tell you so. I’ve had jobs that give me bonuses based on how well I do compared to others, how well the company does in the market, and how ‘hard’ I work, so to say, based on some arbitrary metrics. I hadn’t thought about bonuses as being demotivating before because I like to compete (and win). In some of my experience they have driven behaviors of lower collaboration and higher negative competition where the only winner is the company itself and not the individual employee doing the work (and the company can only win in that situation for so ..read more

Most people have seen the statistic where a man will apply for a job he meets 6/10 qualifications for and the woman won't unless she meets 10/10 (states HBR, Confidence Code, Lean In...). This is centered in a lot of bias, imposter syndrome, and also business norms and these are all hurting not just the job prospects of someone applying but also the success of the person who actually gets hired (Natalie speculation here ..read more

There's been a movement around #payToSpeak conferences on Twitter and elsewhere, that is conferences where the speaker essentially ends up paying to speak there (travel expenses, time put into the talk, time not working when being at the conference etc.). I think that speakers should be paid, or they at least shouldn't be going negative in budget to speak at a conference. Here's my experience ..read more

I was taught asking someone how much money they made was a rude question. You just don't do it along with talking about politics and religion and a myriad of other somewhat taboo things. But why? Equal pay day wasn't that long ago and a contribution to the reason that women don't get paid as much is because we don't know that we aren't...so let's talk about it! I got the motivation from this great article by Ellen Pao. Check that out for more ideas ..read more

I’ve been accused of being a narcissist before. Not in those exact words, but I will never forget the conversation. I was 25 and a good friend of mine and I were talking. She finally said (in a rare pause of my banter), “Natalie, you always talk about you and never ask about me.” Wow, that one hit hard and I felt guilty and ashamed. I had never thought about it before. I wondered where my baby-boomer parents had gone wrong in raising me as a millennial snowflake (who was nothing but extraordinary) who didn’t know the true definition of meaningful discourse. Ever since then, I’ve put a concerte ..read more

I've written about this before in some form or another, I'm sure. But why is it that fire fighting is so attractive in relation to our work lives? Oh yeah, it's that hero mentality ..read more