The Road to Oz

For those of you who don't yet know, I'm making this official: I'm heading back to Australia. My family and I are currently planning to move back to Canberra in early September (just over 3 months from now) It's been a long time: nearly 18 years in England (I'll be leaving about 1 month short … Continue reading The Road to Oz →

The Joy of Work

What do I Want? I've been thinking a lot about my ideal workplace, and my role in it. What I put into my job, and what I get out of it. My mission. I think I can describe it like this: My mission is to bring mutuality, mastery and respect to the process of making … Continue reading The Joy of Work →

Joe’s Favourite Podcasts (2018 Edition)

I commute. 75 minutes each way, every day. That's 2½ hours every day of otherwise slack time which I like to fill in with some sort of learning, which come from various podcasts I've picked up over the years. Here's my current list, in alphabetical order... Agile Uprising Topics: Software, Agile Website: http://podcast.agileuprising.com/ Interviews with … Continue reading Joe’s Favourite Podcasts (2018 Edition) →

Extreme Tuesday Club: 2017 Retrospective

2017 was a transformative year for XTC. I can say it's the year we definitively stepped up from "not quite dead" to "vibrant and engaged". I can lay the credit on this to a couple of changes we made to the format at the start of 2017: Reduce occurence from weekly to fortnightly Ensure that … Continue reading Extreme Tuesday Club: 2017 Retrospective →

Converting to Kotlin

After dipping my toe in the water a number of times, I've finally taken the plunge. Over the last couple of weeks I've been migrating a private project from Java to Kotlin. This is a report of how it's been going... Firstly, my main interest in Kotlin was the cleaner language design, the clear Java … Continue reading Converting to Kotlin →

Culture-Driven Team Building Capstone: Week 2

Tony Morales Interview Process for forming a consulting team: Forming the consulting team happens on a case by case basis, as it depends upon the industry, function, and available people Team is formed of principals, executives and residents at Inter-Growth, staff members, researchers, and experts Experts are one of: Functional experts (e.g. have deep experience … Continue reading Culture-Driven Team Building Capstone: Week 2 →

Culture-Driven Team Building Capstone: Week 1

I’m studying the course Culture-Driven Team Building Capstone on Coursera. These are my revision notes for week 1. Tony Morales Interview Intergrowth: a global leadership advisory firm helping with talent and organisation issues, such as executive search, executive coaching, leadership development, organisational design, risk, culture transformation, strategy Tony is a senior consultant at Intergrowth Logistics … Continue reading Culture-Driven Team Building Capstone: Week 1 →

Culture, Ethnography, Grounded Theory and the Effectiveness of Stand-ups

Late last year (the end of 2016), Andy Parker and I were talking about a frustrating problem common to many senior people in teams: how to improve or positively affect the people we work with so that we were all happier and more effective? These discussions have lead me through one of the more intensive … Continue reading Culture, Ethnography, Grounded Theory and the Effectiveness of Stand-ups →

Culture-Driven Team Building

Since March 2017, Andy Parker and I have been studying the Culture Driven Team Building specialisation from the University of Pennsylvania (delivered through Coursera). The specialisation is composed of 5 different month-long courses. I have published blogs containing detailed study notes for all these courses. This post collects links to all those blog posts in … Continue reading Culture-Driven Team Building →

Fostering Innovation in Groups and Teams

I’m studying the course Creating a Team Culture of Continuous Learning on Coursera. These are my revision notes for week 4: Fostering Innovation in Groups and Teams. Introduction & Learning in Ambiguous and Uncertain Environments How do we balance what we don't know with what we do know? Organisations need to enable a learning environment: … Continue reading Fostering Innovation in Groups and Teams →