Adrian Cho's Blog, page 2

Ten ways to kill productivity and passion: 9) Frustrate with friction

This is the ninth in a series of ten posts about common problems that can lead teams to fail or otherwise limit their success. The previous post in this series was 8) Entertain egos. Friction slows things down. If you roll a ball along a flat and level surface it will eventually stop as a result [...]

Ten ways to kill productivity and passion: 8) Entertain egos

This is the eighth in a series of ten posts about common problems that can lead teams to fail or otherwise limit their success. The previous post in this series was 7) Isolate initiative. As I wrote earlier in this series in 2) Inhibit individuality, one of the most effective ways to build and run a [...]

Ten ways to kill productivity and passion: 7) Isolate initiative

This is the seventh in a series of ten posts about common problems that can lead teams to fail or otherwise limit their success. The previous post in this series was 6) Manufacture motivation. Who are the leaders in the various teams and organizations in which you work and play? Most people can respond to this [...]

Ten ways to kill productivity and passion: 6) Manufacture motivation

This is the sixth in a series of ten posts about common problems that can lead teams to fail or otherwise limit their success. The previous post in this series was 5) Dream impossible dreams. Motivation is the force that moves us to achieve goals. Intrinsic motivation is that which comes from within a person. For example,you [...]

Ten ways to kill productivity and passion: 5) Dream impossible dreams

This is the fifth in a series of ten posts about common problems that can lead teams to fail or otherwise limit their success. The previous post in this series was 4) Demonstrate distrust. To dream the impossible dream (cue music) is to set lofty goals with absolutely no reasonable chance of attaining them. It's great [...]

Ten ways to kill productivity and passion: 4) Demonstrate distrust

This is the fourth in a series of ten posts about common problems that can lead teams to fail or otherwise limit their success. The previous post in this series was 3) Exploit efforts to the extreme. Organizations have lots of rules. These rules are encoded in various processes and procedures, methodologies and ways of working. They [...]

The importance of screwing up

I screw up all the time. Yes that's right. Sometimes my mistakes go unnoticed and sometimes, hopefully not too often, they are big screw-ups that affect others. As we are near the end of 2010, the mind invariably turns to a retrospective of the year. In any aspect of our life, whether it be work, [...]

Reflections on writing a book

It's now been about five months since the book has been out and it has been interesting for me to reflect on the entire process of writing, publishing, promoting and waiting for reviews. One of the claims I made in the book is that people can often benefit by thinking about their work as a [...]

Ten ways to kill productivity and passion: 3) Exploit efforts to the extreme

This is the third in a series of ten posts about common problems that can lead teams to fail or otherwise limit their success. The previous post in this series was 2) Inhibit individuality. There are many ways to extract a greater level of performance from a team. The most obvious method, and the one that is [...]

Hampton University's Jam Session

I haven't posted in a while as I've been completely overwhelmed with work on the Jazz projects at IBM. One recent development is a note I received a couple of months ago from staff at the Hampton University School of Engineering and Technology. They've been reading the Jazz Process book and are planning to incorporate [...]