goals

OKRs: First Steps for Crushing Your Objectives and Key Results

At a Glance - What are OKRs? If you've arrived at this post, you've probably heard of OKRs but maybe you're looking for a bit more of an introduction to them. Not to worry! We'll keep this light and practical for getting started. OKRs are a framework for helping define, communicate, and measure progress towards goals. Their intention is to not be specifically top-down, but instead there's goal setting and transparency that works both ways. Objectives, the 'O' in OKRs, are essentially single sentence that communicates what you’re trying to achieve. These should drive the point home at a high level, and there's nothing wrong with making them feel exciting. Key Results, the 'KR' part of OKRs, are the metrics that you will be using to gauge how successful you are to achieving your objective. Usually you group about 3-5…

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May 28, 2021

Perspective / Tips

Resolutions: Why Have Them and How to be Successful

What's Up With Resolutions? It's that time of year! You know, where everyone is thinking back on all of the things they wish they had actually accomplished this year and they're convincing themselves they'll get it done next year. It's time to set some New Year's resolutions! But what's up with that? Why does it take people a whole year to reflect on what's going right or wrong in their life and try to change their direction? Why does it take you a year to realize your diet and exercise regime is something you couldn't stick to and you're no better off than you were last year? Why were you still unmotivated in your career doing the same old thing? Why didn't you get your head in the game for school? Why did you continue to pursue toxic relationships? Continuous…

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December 27, 2016

Perspective / Tips

How to Refocus: Getting Back in the Groove

Identifying when you need to refocus It happens to everyone at some point to varying degrees, for various reasons, and at different times in our lives--but it'll happen! You hit a period or a rut where you can't keep your focus on continuing to be successful (and I'm over-generalizing that for a good reason). Maybe this means you can't focus at work to perform at an optimal level. Maybe you're falling off the diet you've been working hard on. Maybe your training in the gym or for your sport is taking a hit because your head isn't in the game. Maybe you find yourself unable to hit the books studying or completing your projects in school. It can look different for everyone. There are a bunch of different little warning signs that things aren't quite on track and you need…

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December 18, 2016

Articles

Article Roundup: Burn Out

Burn Out I had a lot of really positive feedback from my friends and family after writing about my experiences of going through burn out. If you haven't read the post, check it out here. I've done some article summaries on the topic of burn out before, but I feel like it's probably a good topic to bring up again in light of my recent post. For a bit of background, burn out is a process that can occur to an individual that's dedicating too much time to a particular activity. It leads to an imbalance in terms of what his or her time is put towards and can result in a person feeling depressed without any energy. Wikipedia does a pretty good job of summarizing it in one quick sentence: Burnout is a psychological term that refers to long-term…

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May 4, 2015

Perspective / Small Business / Startups / Tips

Burn Out – An Alternate Perspective

Disclaimer I wanted to write this post to share my honest and personal experiences with burn out in the software and startup scene. I'm hoping that my experiences with getting to a stage of burn out can help someone identify if they're going through the same thing. Hopefully someone will be able to take preventative actions before things get too serious, like I've been able to do. I'd also like to point out that I absolutely love my job (you'll be reminded of that in my post) so my experience might be biased in some ways because of that. If I didn't love what I do, I'd be finding another job where I did. What is Burn Out? In my earlier days at the company I work for, I remember my HR manager talking to me about burning out. It's…

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April 24, 2015

Leadership / Management / Tips

One on One Evolution

Background I'm a "middle manager" where I work, but that means a whole bunch of things. My everyday tasks primarily consist of programming, but I do a bunch of work to interface with other departments and teams, and I play a role in managing people on... well, the "people" side of things. For the latter part, I refer to that as people leadership. I think it's pretty easy to look at some of the aspects of people leadership and dismiss them as "fluffy" or needless... I consider myself a logical/technical thinker, so I have that frame of mind sometimes. However, I do see the value in actually being able to support my team so that they can operate at the best of their abilities. I try to find ways to do that without it seeming to them like I'm doing "fluffy leadership things",…

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April 21, 2015

Leadership / Management / Small Business / Uncategorized

Continuous Improvement – One on One Tweaks

Continuous Improvement - Baby Steps! Our development team at Magnet Forensics focuses a lot on continuous improvement. It's one of the things baked into a retrospective often performed in agile software shops. It's all about acknowledging that no system or process is going to be perfect and that as your landscape changes, a lot of other things will too. The concept of continuous improvement isn't limited to just the software we make or the processes we put in place for doing so. You can apply it to anything that's repeated over time where you can measure positive and negative changes. I figured it was time to apply it to my leadership practices. The One on One I lead a team of software developers at Magnet, but I'm not the boss of any of them. They're all equally my peers and…

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August 11, 2014

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