How Remote Teams Work Together

Working remotely is about mutual trust. It’s the same as assessing the security of your home, the reliability of your office job, or the viability of your relationship. It's about creating an ecosystem where both parties can operate securely, reliably, and respectfully. Employers and employees must mutually invest in this ecosystem, recognizing that their actions or inactions can significantly impact each other. If you don’t care, you’ll lose. If you stress over it too much, something seems fishy and you may get burned again. I am a proponent of remote working in theory. And I’ve managed to build a team… Continue Reading

9 Important Lessons About Burnout In The Workplace

While I’m not a medical professional, I’ve been through several burnouts and some of my team members have blanked out for a few weeks before getting back on track. Here are several observations and thoughts of mine regarding burnouts. 1. Burnouts Are Often Not Directly Related to Work All of my burnouts and most of the cases I’ve observed were not directly related to work. Sure, work overload is a contributing factor. But more often than not, there are family troubles, sick family members, additional responsibilities or duties (looking for a new house, car troubles), or an uncomfortable office environment… Continue Reading

Micromanagement – The Good, Bad, and Ugly

It's not just about hovering over an employee's shoulder or obsessing over details. It's a reflection of a company's growth stage, the maturity of its staff, and the very essence of its operational culture. Micromanagement has nothing to do with caring about an employee. However, it’s important to review the different phases of a business and the professional experience of an employee, and the work environment. What is Micromanagement? According to Wikipedia’s sources : In business management, micromanagement is a management style whereby a manager closely observes and/or controls the work of his/her subordinates or employees. Micromanagement is generally considered… Continue Reading

11 Traits Of A Great Manager And Top Tips To Develop Them

There are good managers. And then, there are great ones. According to The Predictive Index, nearly 30% of employees believe their managers fail at team-building skills, and a portion of them suck at handling feedback, delegation, and time management. Managers who are successful in their respective fields leading large teams need to bounce between daily activities with various team members and then to the global responsibilities of the organization. Having consulted over 400 companies as a business advisor, I've worked with any combination of management and leadership teams - veteran and new ones, external and trained bottom up, brought in… Continue Reading

Persistence Is The Way Forward

During WordCamp San Francisco a few years ago, I had the chance to do pair programming with Rodrigo Primo on #15459. He's an incredible and passionate WordPress developer, and he approached me before the Contributor Day to do some hacking on performance for hierarchical post types after I sent my patch with some ideas related to that change. The Unit Test Challenge When we reached the unit tests, none of us knew how to build that specific bit. The function was printing some code without returning an array of data to assert. And we couldn't find a Core example of unit tests doing that validation. I suggested… Continue Reading

Defining Employee Feedback Plans and Pinpointing Areas for Improvement: The Tactical Guide

Why are feedback sessions so important?  For one, companies that carry out regular employee feedback have turnover rates that are 14.9% lower than those employees who receive no feedback at all. Now, here are additional helpful insights from the stats on employee feedback and performance reviews:  Managers who received regular feedback on their strengths showed 8.9% greater profitability. (Source)  About 43% of those highly engaged employees receive feedback on a weekly basis. (Source)  92% of respondents agreed that when negative feedback is delivered appropriately, they can be highly effective at improving one’s performance.” (Source) 63% of Gen Z employees want to… Continue Reading

Dealing With Bullies And Dominance Behavior

I stumbled upon a video called "How to Stop A Bully" by Brooks Gibbs today while surfing through LinkedIn. Here's the original version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oKjW1OIjuw Now, Gibbs shares a number of valuable lessons during his research. Bullying is also called a "Dominance Behavior" by psychologists or establishing a state of power over other human beings. The most common mistake is responding out of anger. As soon as you fall for it, you've lost the bullying game. Bullying In Nature Bullying is extremely popular across all ages, jobs, locations, situations, and places. It starts as early as kindergarten throughout school, jobs, and family gatherings.… Continue Reading

Hourly Rates, Amount Of Work And Availability

Note: This essay is not always applicable while some projects definitely demand a straight work schedule, reporting and collaboration between the team members. However it reflects the majority of projects and clients out there in the wild. As an employer I prefer to charge on a project basis. It's easier to plan my budgets and the costs of the final results. As a contractor I prefer hourly payments. It helps dropping the pressure from incorrect specifications and further negotiations after the project and the budget have already been set. However I am well acquainted with the pros and cons of… Continue Reading

10 Practical Risk Management Techniques

Successful business founders, executives, and managers employ different approaches when it comes to risk management. Whether dealing with financial volatility, market competition, or internal organizational challenges, managing risk effectively is crucial for long-term success. Only 23% of CEOs believe they have comprehensive information about the risks in their business even if 92% of them agree that having such information is highly critical to the success of their venture. On Shark Tank’s season 7, Robert Herjavec said that “Great entrepreneurs live in paranoia”. While I do agree with the sentiment, the risk management course I took back in the day was… Continue Reading

The Power of Big-Picture Thinking: A Key to Sustainable Business Growth

Imagine a business that only focuses on short-term gains, ignoring the bigger picture. What would be the long-term consequences for its vision, strategy, and overall success? Would it be able to sustain growth and create lasting value in a rapidly evolving marketplace? A stark reminder of the need to shift from short-term goals to long-term ones was given by the recent pandemic around the world.  Businesses that failed to take the bigger picture into account and establish a clear long-term goal found it difficult to maintain growth during the instability. In contrast, companies that adopted a broader perspective by evaluating… Continue Reading