Category: Challenge Case
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Challenge Case: Toxic Genius
We have intelligent engineers who are both technical heroes that save us from catastrophe and childish bullies that berate people they see as inferior. I don’t know what to do about a group of toxic geniuses. They’ve been here since the beginning. Our systems are complex, and these people know our systems better than anyone…
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Challenge Case: Technical Debt
Technical debt is filling our backlog, hurting quality, and burdening the team. Our product launched more than a decade ago, and it runs on an platform several versions old. It’s hard to find people willing to work on the old version of the platform, and even the vendor doesn’t support it any longer other than…
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Challenge Case: Silent Direct Report Manager
I’m blindsided in executive meetings with my peers when situations come up involving my skip-level reports. I have a manager that usually performs well. But lately, managers who report to some of my peers have had issues with one of the teams that reports to me. My manager has been dealing with the issues but…
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Challenge Case: Quiet Quitting
Employees are “quiet quitting” rather than giving what the organization needs to succeed with its goals. I’ve noticed over the last few months that my team seems to be slowing down. People will agree with the team’s commitment, and then somehow the work doesn’t get done on time. There used to be a good number…
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Challenge Case: Oppressive On-Call
System failures are demanding emergency after-hours attention from on-call personnel far more often than we expected.