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Life Frame
What is your life frame?  What are the key buckets in your life that you need to balance across?  If you have a frame, you can balance your life through thick and through thin.  If you have a life frame, you can more thoughtfully allocate Read More...
Posted 20 March 08 05:53 by J.D. Meier | 1 Comments   
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Success Strategies
As part of my improvement sprint focused on leadership, I'm making my way through The First 90 Days , by Michael Watkins. In a nutshell, it's a guide for how new leaders can be successful. I think it's actually relevant for any new role or situation. Read More...
Posted 17 January 08 04:39 by J.D. Meier | 2 Comments   
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The Zen of Zero Mail
You too can have a zero mail inbox, if you choose to. I chose to go zero mail in my inbox when I first joined Microsoft years ago, and I'm glad I did. With a single glance, I know whether I have new mail to deal with. I never have to scroll to see what Read More...
Posted 14 January 08 05:48 by J.D. Meier | 13 Comments   
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Focus and Energy
A colleague drew a chart on my board today. I'll summarize like this: Procrastinators - Low energy and low focus Disengaged - Low energy and high focus Distracters - High energy and low focus. Purposeful - High energy and high focus I like new lenses. Read More...
Posted 10 January 08 04:26 by J.D. Meier | 1 Comments   
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Reward Yourself in the Moment
Happy New Year! It's a new year and many of you will be setting new goals for yourself as part of your New Year's resolutions. I want to give you an important nugget you can use when you implement your goals and start to face some potential discomfort Read More...
Posted 01 January 08 10:36 by J.D. Meier | 1 Comments   
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Rituals for Results
Routines help build efficiency and effectiveness. Consistent action over time is the key to real results. If you add continuous improvement or Kaizen to the picture, you have an unbeatable recipe for success. The following are some of my rituals for results: Read More...
Posted 27 December 07 03:56 by J.D. Meier | 5 Comments   
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Kaizen
Kaizen is a Japanese term for continuous improvement. A little Kaizen goes a long way over time. From a personal development standoint, it's key for overcoming resistance . Read More...
Posted 25 December 07 04:48 by J.D. Meier | 5 Comments   
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Results-Focused Teams Over Role-Focused Teams
In my experience, talent and passion are the keys to effective teams. It's not better defined roles. In PM Tip#14: Great teams have members that defy roles , Brad Abrams writes that the best teams defy traditional roles and responsibilities, and I agree. Read More...
Posted 25 October 07 09:02 by J.D. Meier | 4 Comments   
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Patterns and Practices for New Hires
Whether you're a new hire or taking on a new job, here's some principles, patterns and practices to be more effective. They're lessons learned from the school of hard knocks and they represent some of the proven practices that have worked for others and Read More...
Posted 08 October 07 04:44 by J.D. Meier | 6 Comments   
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Collection Pools
How do you store your notes and reference information in a way that’s low overhead and easy to find? The key is to created a limited set of places to look that you trust. I use a small set of what I call Collection Pools. I think of them as pools because Read More...
Posted 04 October 07 03:58 by J.D. Meier | 5 Comments   
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It's the Fast That Eat the Slow
Using speed as a competitive advantage is less about finding ways to do things quicker. It's more about eliminating speedbumps. In It's Not the Big That Eat the Small...It's the Fast That Eat the Slow: How to Use Speed as a Competitive Tool in Business Read More...
Posted 03 October 07 07:21 by J.D. Meier | 2 Comments   
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Daily Syncs
On my teams we do a daily sync meeting. It's 10 minutes max. We go around the team with three questions: What did you get done? What are you getting done next? Where do you need help? We stay out of details (that's for offline and follow-up). It's a status Read More...
Posted 14 August 07 06:28 by J.D. Meier | 2 Comments   
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Execution Checklists
Execution checklists are a simple, but effective technique for improving results. Rather than a to do list, it's a focused checklist of steps in sequence to execute a specific task. I use notepad to start. I write the steps. On each execution of the steps, Read More...
Posted 08 August 07 08:11 by J.D. Meier | 5 Comments   
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Quick and Dirty Getting Things Done
If you're backlogged and you want to get out, here's a quick, low tech, brute force approach. On your whiteboard, first write your key backlog items. Next to it, write down To Do. Under To Do, write the three most valuable things you'll complete today. Read More...
Posted 12 June 07 04:53 by J.D. Meier | 3 Comments   
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Get Lean, Eliminate Waste
If you want to tune your software engineering, take a look at Lean . Lean is a great discipline with a rich history and proven practices to draw from. James has a good post on applying Lean principles to software engineering . I think he summarizes a Read More...
Posted 08 June 07 06:55 by J.D. Meier | 4 Comments   
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