With tech team focusing on a large project with long development cycle, we need to do things differently. I asked non-tech teams to choose/ form task forces to work on the discovery, planning works of a few key areas. I then asked the product manager to lead the task force while I support it. He …
Author Archives: admin
Survive => Thrive
I visited Boston Toastmaster club meeting. At table topic (impromptu speaking), I was asked to talk about ‘not only survive but thrive’… Two recent Toastmaster experiences were great examples and thanks to Covid-19: (1) Many clubs have brought their meetings online so I ‘could’ join tonight’s meeting. I couldn’t make the meeting in person with …
Always Making Progress
Over the past two weeks, a colleague and I have been calling sales to get buy-in and prepare for customer interviews. Most sales and ops teams were enthusiastic about product/ UX team’s interest in getting customer feedback even if it may not be the right time or circumstance to talk with customers now. What we …
Tea Time
My roommate and I have been working from home since mid March due to Covid. We’re busy during the week, barely talk with each other, and usually work late. Today for the first time, we decided to have a tea in the late afternoon. I love Indian Chai masala tea, hot and comforting, just the …
Karma
I watched Richard Peck to become toastmaster international president at this year’s international convention. Time goes fast. We met 9 years ago at a district 53 conference. I newly joined toastmaster then and attended the conference for the first time by the encouragement of my mentor. I remembered Rich, tall, slim man in suit, standing …
Alternative
I got up at 7AM on a Sunday morning to watch Toastmaster International’s panel discussion about the partnership of Toastmaster and Rotary Club. Somehow, the link didn’t work. I tried several times and waiting, nothing happened…I was a bit annoyed of wasting time and sleep. Then I reminded myself that I ‘gained’ some time to …
Customer Interview
My boss asked me to work with the product and UX/ research teams in designing and preparing customer interviews of a customer portal. Learning a new system (totally different from the one I’m leading and the opposite end of user journey) and about customers are very exciting to me. However, for several team members, interviewing …
Let’s Try
The product manager proposed 2 changes for communication: (1) instead of him doing the stakeholder demo bi-weekly on Monday for the new features, he wants the developers to do so after each sprint on Thursday. The benefits: stakeholders and tech team get to know each other and tech team could practice presentation, coached by the …
Listen and Slow Down
2 weeks after writing ‘Stretch: Do Less’, the 2 things I started practicing are working and I’ll continue… Daily to-do list: start with 3 Meeting, speech: plan less Yet I realized that they’re mostly related to ‘do less/well’. Fort the other 2 goals: listen more and slow down… Count to 3 after others finish before …
Shocking News
I heard shocking news at a previous company: a ‘powerful’ long-timer was removed due to harassment charges and two people ‘suddenly’ passed away; there were young, one under 60 and the other in 20s. There is a Chinese proverb:人做事天在看;善有善報,惡有惡報,不是不報,時機未到 (God/ higher force watch our action; good for good, bad for bad, if it doesn’t happen …