I have been asked what we mean when we say that we can tune your team dynamics. Since I have lots of experience observing team dynamics but little experience fixing them I turned to my teammate, Emily (see below) for help on this post. Helping your teams perform at their best starts with the basic understanding that people (with their unique talents) behave differently in different systems. The most basic of these systems in the workplace is the team itself and the dynamics at play. Some teams allow talent to thrive and other team dynamics create a less favorable environment. Because a terrific team doesn't get much attention, when people ask us about team dynamics, they are often thinking specifically about a toxic team. So here is my favorite example of a toxic team dynamic, drawn from real life. Imagine a cybersecurity group (CSG) that has a super star, Sally. Sally is awesome. She does great work and does it quickly and reliably. She is always there to help those who need it. A...

Agentic AI is not a tool in the conventional sense. A technologist with Agentic AI is not simply doing their usual job, but with some help. They are doing a new job and not the one for which you hired them. The current best practice for a technologist using Agentic AI is to use a swarm of agents for each task. This means that your solo technologist now has to divide their tasks up into practical chunks, assign each chunk to an autonomous entity and then keep track of those entities while they work. In other words, every solo technologist in this model is a supervisor. Instead of being a tool whose purpose is to enhance your solo practitioner's productivity, Agentic AI is a team of virtual assistants who do the task instead of your solo practitioner. Is this reality good? Sometimes. Is this fact something you can just ignore? Absolutely not. The problem is that even when Agentic AI works perfectly it makes demands on your solo practitioner which are very different from the demands i...

  What could be scarier than a ghost or goblin demanding candy? How about A GIANT YELLOWJACKET MADE OF GOURDS! It's time again for the monthly litany of the hacked. This is our recitation of entitles that have been hacked or cyber-attacked, that we know of, in the recent month. The point of the litany is awareness that these things happen, and therefore we like to encourage pooling resources and ideas to increase your odds of success. The litany seems to have bulked up on Halloween candy and now includes: Binance...TFG London...Ahold Delhaize (supermarket multi-national holding company), specifically targeting grocery store refrigerators...Frontline Education...Moderna...Quest Diagnostics (again)...Anthropic (by a DOGE alumni-founded company, Cathedral)...Dyfed-Powys Police...State of Arizona court systems...Ogi Networks Limited (ONL) and Data Cymru (entities that had passwords of, yes really, Password1)...AfD (showing that sometimes the right people get  hacked)... ConnectWis...

There are at least five things you can do to be a better manager: thrive in the first 90 days, manage employee leave better, assess strengths *and* limitations, journal, and manage team conflict. Here are three reflections on the series. First, as we noted all along, these methods are either low-cost or free. You don't need to go to an in-resident Ivy League B-School program for 6 weeks to get better at being a manager as fun as that would be because -- dorm food & this series. Second, especially for technically adept leaders, these methods let you be your introvert self. No trust falls, karaoke, walking barefoot through fire pits, "sharing," etc. (again as fun as those might be). Third, you've noticed, no doubt, that in many ways these means to be a better manager involve you paying attention : how am I onboarding, what example am I setting with leave utilization, what really actually are my strengths and limitations, how did today go for me, who's in confli...

  Do you want to be a better manager? Here is the fifth piece of advice in an occasional series. Remember, these processes are usually free and have high ROI. Ready? OK: Manage employee conflict on your team . First, let's get this straight. Yes, there is conflict among employees on your team. In fact the better each team member is, the more likely they are in conflict because the more they care about what they're doing and they are more invested in team outcomes, in addition to being good at their technical work. I once worked with a leader in a cross-organization role. She led a team of industry experts, each of whom believed they were "right." She once in my presence looked at them and said "if you're not managing conflict, you're not paying attention." Bingo. Second, you probably know of business lore/war stories (can't even avoid the term, can we) regarding Very Famous Tech Giants who reveled in having subordinate managers 'fight it out...

Do you want to be a better manager? Here is the fourth piece of advice in an occasional series. Remember, these processes are usually free and have high ROI. Ready? OK: Keep a journal . Not what you expected, was it?  I know. You don't have time, can't actually be real, what is this the 16th century, etc. The goal of journaling in general is to offer the journaler a chance to be alone with their thoughts for a little bit. This is not about writing a novel or answering questions. It's time to process what happened, reflect on high points and low points, goals for the future, etc. The benefits of journaling include having a chance to work out your (negative) feelings about office events, relive your (positive) feelings about office events, a private opportunity to think through options, and keep positive details from your daily life in focus. Here is how Michael Phelps, Olympic multi-gold medalist swimmer, puts it: “As long as I’m doing something right or something positive t...