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The Power of a Single Question in Understanding Customer Needs People tend to see their circumstances as more unusual, difficult, or troublesome than anyone else’s. As a result, by asking about their problem, priorities, or responsibilities, you can gain important information about their situation and how they perceive it. Here's one question to learn a lot about your customers. |
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Thinking Inside the Box before Venturing Outside It In their rush to solve a problem, teams often overlook conventional methods in favor of out-of-the-box ideas. But sometimes, the old standbys—thinking first, reviewing criteria, and asking questions—work the best. Before jumping to creative tactics, start by examining the possibilities readily available inside the box. |
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How to Slim Down Your Bloated Email Inbox If you're spending too much time checking and answering your email—and frankly, who doesn't feel that way—you may just need to revamp your email routine. Here are some techniques for getting a handle on your messages, including better prioritization and categorization. You may even get to the coveted inbox zero. |
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Things Managers Should Never Say Managers have to communicate regularly with the people they're managing. However, managers also need to try harder to be mindful of what they are saying, instead of speaking before they think. Here are some things a manager should never say—avoid these lines and people will be more likely to follow your lead. |
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5 Pitfalls Agile Coaches Must Avoid Successful agile teams often have a coach driving continuous improvement. While some coaches are effective initially, many eventually succumb to pitfalls that inhibit their team’s growth and fail to compel any lasting changes. Here are five common pitfalls of agile coaches in most projects that fail to improve. |
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A Checklist for Managing Go-Live Decisions and Risks If you have to replace a complex existing data system in production, decisions about when and whether to go live should be treated with gravity and care. One process that can help keep you honest is developing checklists that describe very clearly what is expected to be accomplished and verified at each milestone. |
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Send the Right Message: Monitor Your Choice of Voice When we communicate with our coworkers, what’s important in getting our point across is not just what we say, but how we say it. Most of the time, we intuitively moderate our tone to convey friendliness, seriousness, or disappointment, but that can change when we're stressed. Be sure you're sending the right message. |
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3 Telltale Signs You’re Scaling Agile Too Quickly When an organization grows quickly, it puts stress on people, processes, and customers. Burnout happens, things fall through the cracks, and defects creep in. Unfortunately, many organizations try to scale agile too quickly, and that often leads to failure. Here are three of the telltale signs you're scaling too fast. |