Last week I was privileged to speak at CTO Craft Con with Hung Lee. The theme of that first day was hiring, and Hung—who is a long-time recruiter and host … Continue reading A hiring mistake to remember

When I first became a hiring manager I had to learn to say No about people. Because we tended to use recruitment agencies I didn’t have to No directly to … Continue reading Learning to be specific

I was once in a discussion about one of those topics that might, if we were over-dramatising it, be considered part of so-called “culture wars”. That is, on the one … Continue reading When there are questions about inclusivity

Last week the British Prime Minister stood in the United Nations building, in front of an audience of other world leaders, and talked about climate change. As part of the … Continue reading Focus your message

I’ve written before about having difficult conversations, and when working with a team it’s often just a matter of time before we all face a choice between ignoring a people-problem … Continue reading Tips for difficult conversations

My wife occasionally talks about a manager she once had. Once in a while she would approach him with a problem—a paper needed to be written, a process needed to … Continue reading Having solutions ready to go

One Friday, many years ago when I was working with a web agency, one of our designers sent round a company-wide email. This was before the days of Slack, and … Continue reading Toeing the line in public