The Fire That Forges Me
Pain is not punishment. It's preparation. Whether you're a fighter or a leader, how you respond to resistance defines your growth and impact on others.
Leadership
Leadership Through Being
True leadership isn't about position or authority, it's about who you are and how you show up. Leadership through being means creating environments where others can excel, leading by example, and balancing ambition with service. It's about influence that flows from character, not title.
75
Articles on Leadership
Featured Articles
Guard the Circle: Why Leaders Must Invite Dissent to Stay Effective
In fast-moving tech cultures, dissent feels like friction. And friction feels like delay. But a team that agrees too easily is already halfway to failure.
Climbing Through: Leadership Forged in the Struggle
Most teams are trained to dodge the mess—great leaders dive in. True leadership is built in the climb, not at the summit.
Ripples of Ruin or Reward: Why Great Leaders Master the Long Game
Every decision creates ripple effects. Learn how to see beyond the immediate impact and think like a master strategist to build long-term success.
Arete & Eudaimonia: The Cornerstone Philosophy of Excellence
The path to true excellence isn't found in quick fixes or surface, level achievements. It's discovered through the ancient wisdom of arete and eudaimonia, principles that have guided the greatest minds for over 2,000 years.
All Leadership Articles
Broken Windows Don't Fix Themselves. Neither Do Broken Coders.
You're in the file. You see the broken code. If you walk past it without fixing it, you're not just part of the problem, you are the problem.
Alignment: 4/5
The Fire That Forges Me
Pain is not punishment. It's preparation. Whether you're a fighter or a leader, how you respond to resistance defines your growth and impact on others.
Alignment: 5/5
Choose Your Circle Wisely: The Key to Unlocking Greatness and Momentum
The people around you influence your mindset, shape your habits, and often determine your trajectory. And the right ones don't just support you—they sharpen you, steady you, and accelerate you.
Alignment: 4/5
The Silent Burden: Fueling Leadership's Lonely Flame
In the quiet hours when decisions weigh heaviest, leadership can feel like a solitary journey. But it's in these moments that both leaders and their teams can transform pressure into power. Here's how to keep the flame alive.
Alignment: 4/5
The Faux-Aligned Manipulator: When Theater Replaces Execution
They're relentlessly positive. They say yes to everything. They talk about collaboration constantly. But underneath the performance, real execution never happens.
Alignment: 4/5
Guard the Circle: Why Leaders Must Invite Dissent to Stay Effective
In fast-moving tech cultures, dissent feels like friction. And friction feels like delay. But a team that agrees too easily is already halfway to failure.
Alignment: 5/5
Protect Your Spark: Beat the Idea Assassins
Your best ideas are vulnerable to creativity hit jobs. Learn to guard your spark, select the right team, and keep innovation flowing despite the critics.
Alignment: 4/5
Unleashing Innovation: A Leader's Guide to First Principles Thinking
First principles thinking strips away the bullshit and starts with what's undeniably true. It's how leaders transform organizations and build the future.
Alignment: 4/5
Climbing Through: Leadership Forged in the Struggle
Most teams are trained to dodge the mess—great leaders dive in. True leadership is built in the climb, not at the summit.
Alignment: 5/5
Micromanaging AI Is a Terrible Strategy
AI isn't a code monkey. Treat it like a thinking partner, not a servant. Here's how to navigate AI-assisted development without micromanaging.
Alignment: 4/5
Leadership is Jazz: Set the Tempo, Let the Band Play
The best leaders don't micromanage every note—they create the groove and let their team play. Here's how to lead with rhythm, trust, and improvisation.
Alignment: 4/5
Speed Without Direction is Wasted Energy
Speed isn't the goal—winning is. Learn how the fastest teams avoid wasted motion by solving the right problem before they execute.
Alignment: 4/5
Playing the Hand You're Dealt: Decision-Making with Imperfect Info
Leadership is a high-stakes game where the cards are rarely all face-up. Learn how to read the room, filter the noise, and make winning decisions.
Alignment: 4/5
Ripples of Ruin or Reward: Why Great Leaders Master the Long Game
Every decision creates ripple effects. Learn how to see beyond the immediate impact and think like a master strategist to build long-term success.
Alignment: 5/5
How to Know If a Team Has Stopped Creating Tech Debt
Tech debt isn't just about cleanup—it's about discipline. If a team is still making the same mistakes, they're not solving the problem, just hitting reset.
Alignment: 4/5
Stop Complaining About Technical Debt If You Keep Creating More
Cleaning up old messes is meaningless if you're still making new ones. The best teams don't ask for permission to fix tech debt—they stop creating it in the first place.
Alignment: 4/5
The Power of Conflict: Fuel for Greatness or Sign of Dysfunction?
Great teams don't avoid conflict—they process it efficiently. The key to success isn't eliminating conflict, but resolving it quickly and productively.
Alignment: 4/5
AI-Native Development: The Next Evolution is Here
AI isn't coming. It's here. The teams that master AI-native development now will define the future of product delivery. Learn how to navigate this shift and accelerate your team.
Alignment: 4/5
Arete & Eudaimonia: The Cornerstone Philosophy of Excellence
The path to true excellence isn't found in quick fixes or surface, level achievements. It's discovered through the ancient wisdom of arete and eudaimonia, principles that have guided the greatest minds for over 2,000 years.
Alignment: 5/5
Reasons vs. Excuses in Software Development: The Key to Personal Responsibility and Team Success
Dive into the world of personal responsibility and team success in software development by distinguishing between reasons and excuses. Explore the vital role of accountability, examine real-world examples, and uncover five effective strategies designed to help you and your team conquer excuses and take command of your professional journey.
Alignment: 4/5
Boost Your Productivity with Three Daily Habits
Discover three game-changing daily habits that can significantly boost your productivity and help you achieve more in both your professional and personal life.
Alignment: 4/5
Three Aspects of Product Management You Need to Master
Product managers need to be proficient in three key areas: technical skills, data analysis, and empathy for customers. Neglecting any one of these areas can lead to difficulties in successfully managing a product. However, a well-rounded product manager who excels in all three areas can drive success by delivering innovative products that meet customer needs, are technically sound, and supported by data-driven decision-making.
Alignment: 4/5
The Importance of the Enforcer and Nurturer in a Team Dynamic
Explore the crucial roles of enforcers and nurturers in team dynamics, and discover how their complementary strengths create high-performing teams.
Alignment: 4/5
Price's Law: Understanding the Power Law Distribution of Knowledge
Discover how Price's Law explains the distribution of knowledge and productivity in organizations, and learn how to leverage this understanding for better team management.
Alignment: 4/5
How a Sense of Humor Helps Us Deal with Criticism
Learn why maintaining a sense of humor is crucial for processing criticism constructively and using it as a tool for personal growth.
Alignment: 3/5
Code Smells: Identifying and Fixing Common Programming Issues
Discover how to recognize and fix common code smells, making your code more maintainable, efficient, and easier to understand.
Alignment: 4/5
Visualizing Accountability
Discover practical approaches to make accountability visible and actionable within your team and organization.
Alignment: 4/5
Live versus Recorded Demos
Explore the advantages and challenges of both live and recorded product demos, and learn when to use each approach effectively.
Alignment: 3/5
Company Changes Every Time It Doubles in Size
Learn about the critical changes and challenges organizations face during different growth stages, particularly when doubling in size.
Alignment: 4/5
Product Organizations and the Most Important Work
Discover how high-performing product organizations balance team autonomy with organizational alignment to consistently deliver the most impactful work.
Alignment: 3/5
BUDs and Sports: Radically Different Than Software
Explore how software development differs from intense physical training programs, and what we can learn from these contrasts.
Alignment: 3/5
Who You Surround Yourself With Matters
Discover the profound impact of your social connections on your personal and professional development.
Alignment: 4/5
Environment Aids in Skill Acquisition
Discover the importance of creating the right environment for effective learning and skill development.
Alignment: 4/5
Autonomy vs Performance
Learn how to strike the right balance between giving teams autonomy while maintaining high performance standards.
Alignment: 4/5
7 Tips For Getting Value Out of Networking Events
If you are an introvert like me the last thing you want to do is spend time "networking". Even if you are an extrovert your time is valuable and just mingling isn't going to cut the mustard if you want to get any kind of meaningful results. So what is the best strategy when attending an event with intention of networking?
Alignment: 4/5
6 Tips for Scaling A Business
Building an idea is hard. Turning it into a business is even harder. Scaling that business is another level of hard. This is a list of tips to help you get there.
Alignment: 4/5
3 Rules for Dealing with Trolls
Dealing with trolls is an art form. Being on the internet requires you master it.
Alignment: 3/5
Path to Immediate and Unanimous Team Decisions
The Decider Protocol is the fastest path to get immediate and unanimous team decisions.
Alignment: 4/5
5 Principles of Life Seen Through an El Pollo Loco Birthday Lunch
How redeeming my El Pollo Loco birthday reward points revealed powerful life principles through exceptional customer service.
Alignment: 3/5
The Difference Between Influence and Manipulation
The difference between influence and manipulation can be pretty subtle. However, the outcomes they produce can massive. How are they different to you?
Alignment: 4/5
Asking For Help
What about asking for help is so difficult? What expectations do we put on ourselves and others that could be avoided if only we asked for help more frequently?
Alignment: 3/5
Face to Face For Remote Team Members
Dealing with hybrid work environments where some one is remote full time.
Alignment: 3/5
How to Plan Software : Six Ways to Improve Your Scrum Planning Meeting
Six ways to improve your scrum planning meeting.
Alignment: 4/5
Customer Service While Traveling. Fly Classy! Thanks GoGo
What does exceptional service at 10,000ft look like?
Alignment: 3/5
Gangplank Connecting Citizens
The future we want has to be created by us. Creating the Arizona we want.
Alignment: 4/5
Creating The Arizona We Want
The future we want has to be created by us. Creating the Arizona we want.
Alignment: 4/5
Agile Open Southwest Recap
Open Spaces always tend to amaze me. They really are the right people in the right place at the right time. When we kicked off Agile Open Southwest, I was a little bit nervous about what might come out. As always, I was left absolutely amazed. It was great seeing old friends and meeting new ones. Finding everyone was a different place on their journey yet still able to be find common ground and learn from one another.
Alignment: 3/5
Don't Make Your Retrospectives Confusing
If explaining an activity in a retrospective takes more than a minute or two it probably isn't very effective. Don't fall into the trap of making things too complex. Activities shouldn't be complicated they should be fluid. Giving participants too many options and being unclear with instructions makes it difficult to fluid with sharing thoughts.
Alignment: 4/5
Retrospectives. When Facilitating. Facilitate. Don't Participate.
As a ScrumMaster when you are "running" a retrospective it is easy to fall into the trap of actively participating in it. It is extremely difficult to do this well (if not impossible), because your role should be as a facilitator not a participant. The minute you start participating you are no longer neutral and severely impact your ability to effectively facilitate.
Alignment: 4/5
Should Senior Developers Pair Program?
I am a proponent of pairing (not just for programming). Anytime I introduce it to a new team I get a number of objections. The most prominent is that pairing slows me down (because I am so awesome and everyone else sucks so bad).
Alignment: 4/5
Shirky's Sharing Model : Personal, Communal, Public and Civic
Clay Shirky enlightens us in Cognitive Surplus that, the organization of sharing has many forms and that those forms have varying output values. He gives us a way we can identify four essential points on the spectrum
Alignment: 4/5
What Makes Gangplank Magical?
Gangplank is a community of creators that fuses family life, civic life, creating and earning a living into this unique blend where anything is possible. The support and tenderness offered is counter balanced by a gruff and forceful exterior making participation daunting to most.
Alignment: 3/5
Transform a Relationship, Be Fully Present
People need to be understood that they matter. We are wired to belong. It doesn't matter if it is your spouse, child, employee or coworker every relationship you wish to maintain requires your attention. Most people consider attention to be measured in time. Time is in short supply and high demand in our connected and fast paced world.
Alignment: 4/5
5 Ways to Tell if Your DevOps Relationship is Failing You
Going to cross-functional teams for product delivery is always interesting, but DevOps seems to be particularly loaded in it's meaning. How to tell if your DevOps relationship is failing you?
Alignment: 3/5
Organizing for Collaboration and Innovation through Policy, Innovation by Design
Talking to science educators about collaboration. How can we better organize and enact polity that leads to greater innovation.
Alignment: 2/5
When It Comes to Community Building, It is the Small Things
Changing a community is slow work. Paying attention to the details and working with discipline over time with patience is required to get real results.
Alignment: 3/5
15 Things You Should Teach Your Kids To Prepare Them For the Future
Be the best parent you can. Prepare your children for the future.
Alignment: 4/5
10 Steps for Planning a Great Event
Planning events is difficult. The hardest part is starting. Here is a quick 10 step guide to get you planning for that perfect event you have been dreaming about.
Alignment: 3/5
Restore the Balance of Humanity. Create.
Consumption is rampant. What does is it mean to create?
Alignment: 3/5
Call to Volunteer at Arizona State Parks
I love Arizona. It's natural resources are one of it's greatest assets. I have been encouraging people to get out and ExploreAZ. If you didn't know our State Parks have become seriously under funded and need our help. So how can you help?
Alignment: 3/5
Essence of Humanity is Helping Other People Feel Safe
In Andre Agassi's Open he shows the authentic and human side of himself. He talks about giving a friend named Frankie the money he needs to put his children through school. He reflects on it in the following way:
Alignment: 4/5
Reminding Yourself Where You Are Going
I generally keep voice memos or written journals around as outlets for my thoughts when I am not regularly able to connect with people to share what is on my mind. I try to purge them into a digital format fairly quickly to prevent clutter. I don't recall why I recorded this segment, but I ran across it today and it made me smile.
Alignment: 3/5
Ruby Revolution Rebuttal
In a blog post, Mark Turner has responded to the claim that Ruby is just a bunch of tools by stating that it is actually about making developers happy. I believe that the Ruby community is too focused on creating tools and lacks creativity and true innovation. Regional Ruby events have become more about showcasing tools and less about sharing cutting-edge ideas.
Alignment: 3/5
Ruby is Just a Bunch of Tools
I have always liked Unix because of it's mentality that lots of small tools chained together could be more than an opaque larger tool. In this instance. I mean Rubyists are a bunch of Tools not of the useful kind. Maybe Zed is right an Rails is a Ghetto.
Alignment: 2/5
Rituals Help Us Form Emotional Connections
Whatever our exact ritual, the social act of eating together is important; it reunites us with our tribe. Transforming us from solitary beings to members of a group.
Alignment: 3/5
Joe Kalt on Arizona Economy
Notes from Joe Kalt talking about Arizona's economy from Arizona's 96th Town Hall on Building Arizona's Future: Jobs, Innovation & Competitiveness.
Alignment: 3/5
Flashback on Arizona's 96th Town Hall
Random notes from the Arizona's 96th Town Hall on Building Arizona's Future: Jobs, Innovation & Competitiveness.
Alignment: 3/5
Sometimes Team Perspective Is Needed
The benefit about working on a high performing team is that everyone expects excellence. There is always a drive that it could be better. Nail a perfect 10 and then ask how it could be an 11.
Alignment: 4/5
It's About People. Companies Saying Right Wage. Wrong Skill Set.
Why do we keep doing 1950 economic development? Capital first, then innovation and then people. Yet, companies wanting to be here say that it's lack of skilled people that keeps them out. What are we doing to invest in people? Keep and attract the best and brightest?
Alignment: 3/5
Four Principles of Collaborative Consumption
The basis of the 'Sharing Economy' operates on principles. How are you seeing them applied in the world around you? What can you learn from them? How are you applying them?
Alignment: 3/5
Great Service Requires Constant Attention
I am a fan of great service. When I see it exemplified I try to share it. For example, QuikTrip does a great job #winning. Another company that has always impressed me is Discount Tire. They always greet me right away. They fix my tires for free when repairable. They give me a free air check when my tires are low. All of this even on tires not purchased from them. WOW! They never give me problems when I need tires rotated or tires replaced under warranty that I did purchase from them.
Alignment: 3/5
Coworking Space vs Collaborative Workspace
When talking about Gangplank I always struggle to consider it to have anything to do with coworking. After doing some reading on collaborative learning vs. cooperative learning, I believe I can better articulate the difference between collaborative workspaces and coworking spaces.
Alignment: 3/5
Desert Code Camp 2011.1
Desert Code Camp has opened it's call for suggestions. This is a great FREE event that brings together technologists of all kinds together at a single location to learn (while feeding them breakfast and lunch) new technologies, improve on existing technology or share your favorite technology. There has been a good dynamic languages track in addition to a strong Microsoft track. There has been a track for kids (Gangplank Jr) and even sessions on sales or running a business.
Alignment: 4/5
Skysong: Helping Cement Phoenix as the Place for Mediocre People
The Greater Phoenix Economic Council released a report touting that Skysong actually is exceeding expectations and has been underestimated. Citing a $113 million impact which is largely calculated using salaries of people that have worked there over the last five years.
Alignment: 2/5
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