Kallokain

I made a mistake 10 years ago: I wrote and published my first management and leadership book, Tempo , in Swedish. That cut off most of my friends in the management community from reading it. It also limited the overall number of people who could read the book. I have finally decided to do something about it: I am rewriting Tempo  to keep it current, and I am doing the rewrite in English. I will also publish the first draft of each chapter on this blog. You are welcome to read, and also to review and comment. Please click the comment link at the bottom of this post. Eventually, I'll publish Tempo 2.0  as a book, but this way, I can deliver value early, and with a bit of luck, I can get early feedback from people with many different points of view. Enough preamble, here is the first draft of the first revised chapter. I do hope you enjoy it.

Recently, I put my foot in my mouth while tweeting. This turned out to be a good thing, not only because it was an amazing feat of dexterity considering my age and body mass, but also because it lead to an interesting conversation, and thus, an opportunity to think things through, and to learn. I won’t recapitulate the whole conversation in this blog post, because you can easily look it up on Twitter . I’ll provide the tweet that kicked the discussion off though, and give you the gist of the conversation. I have invited everyone who was involved to read and review this blog post, so if I screw anything up, they can jump in and unscrew it again. It started with me tweeting:  That started up a conversation with Henrik Berglund and Beatric During. It did not take many tweets until I wrote: “There are plenty of things where SAFe has a very shallow implementation of important ideas. For example, they borrowed the idea of PI planning from Reinertsen, but ignored the limitations h...

Chrononauts V: Taking Flight by Henrik Mårtensson It's early in 2020, and I think it is appropriate to make a personal retrospective of the year that was. I am not quite as certain it is appropriate to publish said retrospective, but then again, if I decide not to publish it, I'll probably never get around to writing it. For me, 2019 has been a very good year, both privately, and at work. Let's get the personal stuff out of the way first. I haven't blogged much in this blog, but that is mainly because I have been busy, with work, and with other things. My hobbies, like digital art, may not seem to have much to do with my work on process and organization improvement, or my forages into Scrummastery, but actually they do. Almost everyone I know who is a really good software developer, or leader, or manager, does have some sort of interest in creative arts. Some play instruments or sing, others write, draw, are into photography, or some other creative activity...

Imagine that you are a manager charged with staffing a new development team. You have important choices to make: What kind of developers do you want? Specialists? Generalists who can do a bit of everything? A mix? Is it worth it to pay more for developers who are a bit more skilled? Division of Labor vs. T-Shaped People Most companies I've seen over the years focus on cost. When it comes to developers, that means the default behavior is to get the cheapest ones. That means neither depth of skill, nor range of skills makes much difference. For a developer, having a wide range of skills can even be a detriment, because managers do not know which narrowly defined role to put the developer in. On the other hand, anyone who has even a passing familiarity with Lean, and know a little bit about agile beyond Scrum, has probably come into contact with the concept of T-shaped people. Most companies develop and organize people according to the Division of Labor principle, the i...

I wrote a rather lengthy article about serious flaws in the recruitment processes used by most companies on Linkedin. The article is named Why HR Can't Hire Pilots. Before I published it, I asked a few people, HR people and managers to read it and provide feedback. Despite the article being rather controversial in its conclusions, they liked it.

The nice people who do the Oikosify Scrummaster Toolbox podcasts , asked me to tell you that they, very sensibly, I think, have split their interview with me into smaller parts. (When I get going on a topic I am interested in, well...let's just say we had a long talk.) So, if you care for your sanity, I recommend you listen to their other podcasts . If you think sanity is overrated, or if it is just too late for you, here are the ones where Vasco Duarte interviewed me: Leadership: How to get people to jump off a cliff, literally ! How to set effective goals for a project . The most important recruitment question . Introducing the Logical Thinking Process and Process Control Charts How to deal with sociopaths at work Tonight, when things have quieted down, I will listen to a few of their more recent podcasts. They've got material there I am very interested in. :-)

Picture by Henrik Mårtensson I originally published this article at Linkedin Pulse : When I transitioned from my work as a developer and systems architect into working with leadership, strategy, organization, and process improvement, I had a lot to learn. Naturally, I read a lot, I joined interest groups, and I asked questions. I soon discovered that there were some questions that, though very important, were never asked. The reason for not asking important questions is usually embarrassment. If I know I am supposed to know something, but I don't, then it is embarrassing to ask. Short term, it is often easier to hide the lack of knowledge. The downside, of course, is that if one does not ask, one does not learn. If nobody asks, nobody learns, but everyone believes everybody else knows… This can create a downwards spiral, where nobody knows anything about something, but everybody is to busy hiding their lack of knowledge to notice. I found that in business, str...

I wrote a review on Amazon for Exploring the Practice of Antifragility . I am republishing it here: First disclosure: As of the 5 th of December 2015, I am a contributor to this book! I do not have a financial stake in it, but I do wish the book to succeed, because I believe the idea of antifragility to be important. I won't review my own contribution, of course, but stick to the things I have read by the other contributors. Second , Exploring the Practice of Antifragility is itself antifragile! The book is a Kindle ebook, and like all Kindle books, it can be updated with new material from time to time. This means the book itself can evolve according to pressure from the environment, i.e. reviews and sales data can actually make this book better over time. Thus, if you buy the book, think of a way to improve it, and write about it in a review, your wish might come true. While this is possible to do with all Kindle ebooks, I do not think too many of them make good use...

I've been speedwriting again! This time about how to write and publish a book very fast:   Skriv och sälj!: Skriv och sälj en bok på 14 dagar (Write and Sell!: Write and sell a book in 14 days) is out on Adlibris ,  Bokus , Dito , and Bokon . Actually, speedwriting  is a misnomer. I am, have always been, and always will be, a slow writer. The idea with Write and sell!  is to reduce queue and wait times in a book production process, the same way we can reduce it in software development processes (Agile), in product development (Lean Product Development), and in manufacturing (Lean, TOC). I am digging down to the queueing theory with this one, and going with it all the way to what to do, and how to do it. Writing and publishing the book took only nine days. I had planned to do it in 14 days, but the gods of time buffering were on my side this time around. Writing and publishing the book took only nine days. The reason why the lead time was so short, is...

Click the picture to buy Tempo! from Bokus. Tempo! has finally got distribution in Sweden! The printed version of the book is now available on Bokus , and  Adlibris . In addition, companies hiring me for consulting work, can buy Tempo! from a special web shop, at a considerably reduced price. When I wrote Tempo! my intent was to write a practically useful business strategy book in Swedish. I did not want to tell other people what to do with their businesses, that is for them to decide, but I wanted to help out with how  to do whatever it is they want to achieve. I had seen too many companies where good, smart people just ran into a brick wall when they tried to make things better, not just for themselves, but for everyone in the organization, and for their customers. Tempo! is illustrated with more than 100 diagrams and photos Originally, I wanted to write a book about a practical method for developing strategy. I felt there was a lot of need, because I have...

The ebook version of LESS! is now available on Dito ,  Bokus , Bokon and Adlibris . LESS! is of course also available via Amazon . I am very proud of LESS!. I am particularly proud of the fact that I did not write most of it. LESS! is a collaborative work, and working with the other authors has been a privilege I cannot adequately describe. One of my best adventures ever. LESS! is about building better places to work: Have you ever had a great idea crushed by the words, "we can't do that, because it's not in the budget"? Then you really need to read up on Beyond Budgeting. Bjarte Bogsnes, VP of Performance Management at Statoil and Dr. Peter Bunce, Director of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, have written two chapters helping you free yourself from the chains of budgeting. If you look around you at work, and see people with great potential, but somehow things never get together like they should. The sum of the work is always less than the sum of what the i...

Recently, I wrote an article for a Swedish website about applying queueing theory to writing and publishing books. Having done that, I decided to follow my own advice from the article, and see what I could do to increase my own productivity. The first thing to do, is to figure out whether I can do more with what I have already got. I can, and quite easily too. If I build better distribution and marketing networks, I will sell more, it's that simple. I won't go into details right now. I have work I need to get on with, but distributing via Publit gets me access to half a dozen new sales channels in Sweden. I am also adding a couple of marketing channels I haven't used before. The result, if I do it right, will be more book sales. As you can see from the Publit webstore embedded in this post, the mix of books is quite eclectic: Management & Leadership, Photograhy, even a comic book. Eventually, I will compartmentalize a bit, but for now, I want the word to spr...

I am working on a magazine article about what C-level executives want from the middle managers that work for them in terms of character traits, experience, and knowledge. To make the interviews as brief and simple as possible, I am doing most of the interviews via an online questionnaire. All information will be treated confidentially, and anonymously. Participants will receive a copy of the report I will prepare as a basis for the article. If you want to participate, send an email to self@henrikmartensson.org , and I will return a link to the questionnaire. I will not put you on any email list, or spam you in any way. You will get a copy of the report, that is all.

Can you apply business strategy principles to any strategic game? Yes, you can! Is it useful to do so? Yes, it is! It teaches you a deep understanding of the principles involved. That understanding will help you apply the principles better in business, in your personal life, and in any other strategic game of your choosing. The photo above just got selected for the 1x gallery . 1x.com is the world's largest curated gallery. It has attracted some of the best photographers in the world, and it is only the top 3% of the photos submitted that makes it into the gallery. I took that shot, using strategic principles derived from Strategic Navigation, the business strategy framework originally created by Bill Dettmer. Dettmer based his business strategy framework partly on Maneuver Conflict, a military framework great for dealing with high degrees of uncertainty and complexity, and the Theory Of Constraints, which kicks ass in the domain of complicated cause and effect. I st...

"When there is no time to think, you cannot think." Quote by Tim, my 9 year old son. Photo: Henrik Mårtensson Unless you live alone in a cave in the mountains, you are awash in a flood of ideas, from the time in the morning when you greet your significant other, or start up your computer, to the moment you fall asleep at night. Some of those ideas will be good ones. Once in awhile, very rarely, you will encounter a great idea. Most ideas, however, are bad ones. They range from doing minor harm, to being lethally dangerous. Unfortunately, our brains are designed to be rather gullible. We tend to believe stuff, even if there is little or no evidence. We tend to believe simple ideas, and disregard ideas that take significant mental effort. However, reality can be quite complex. Simple does not mean true, or even likely. If we want to avoid getting into trouble because of bad ideas, we need defense mechanisms against our innate gullibility. Some time ago, I wro...