The Pragmatic Strategist

Grumble, Bumble, Facebook Trouble

I was reading an article this weekend, on Entrepreneur.com, and it actually made me a little snarky. In Health Insurance, a 401(k) and…Facebook?, author Justin Petruccelli discusses a new Junior Achievement/Deloitte Teen Ethics Survey in which 58% of teenage respondents stated that the ability to use social networks would be a factor in their decision-making [...]

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Why Customer Service Matters

Many people don’t think about it specifically, but know it intuitively: if you want good customer service, skip the big guys and go to a small company. In Small Business’ Competitive Advantage, I discuss that Customer Service is the magical pixie dust for small business. Think about your normal daily experience: if you need to [...]

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There is No Strategy if You Don’t Manage Your Team

Last week I wrote an opening rant about “strategists.” In the comments that ensued, I am now inspired to clarify what I mean while I continue to write this series. I am not talking about consultants who are hired to help hone and build out a strategic vision for an organization; nor am I talking [...]

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Where Are You Leading?

I’ve had an interesting few weeks. My husband and I have been dealing with a lot of things at home, hence my absence from blogging for much of the past month, and I have started a new project with the New Media (a.k.a. “web”) team at KXAN-TV here in Austin. Between getting settled into the [...]

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To Say Agile, Or Not to Say Agile… That is the Question

I had an interesting conversation yesterday after I gave a presentation. I was talking about the necessary functions — particularly when it comes to communications, documentation, change management and entry/exit criteria — of project management in an Agile development process. The “interesting” conversation I had afterward was because one of the attendees (in a private [...]

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Why Agile Isn't Just for Development

It’s been years since the evangelism for Agile development started truly gaining momentum. Super sexy buzzphrases phrases like “reduce time to market,” “improved ROI,” and “lower development costs” have all been invoked to support the case for adopting an Agile methodology over the old-school Waterfall approach. The fact is, most experienced professionals have lived through [...]

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Qualities of a Great Speaker – Educational Value of Content

As noted in my previous blog post on this topic, the first quality I believe is necessary in a great speaker is for them to be educational in some way. In my recent bout of conferences, I have seen speakers who fall all over the quality spectrum, but the ones that were truly good ensured [...]

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