danieltucker.orgPeople First
For the time being, the success company still depends on its people. I always seek to remember that people want respect and dignity at work. Start with those, and most people will work with you in good faith.
My Approach
Pragmatic Innovation
Seek first to understand
A career of diverse and challenging roles has taught me how to get to the heart of issues. The questions aren't ground-breaking, but I have gotten very good at knowing when I've found the root cause of a problem, or if more digging is required.
One- or two-way doors
Popularized by Steven Bartlett and Amazon, decisions that are low risk and reversible (two-way doors) should be made quickly without over-analyzing. High-risk, irreversible decisions should be made with care and consideration.
You win, or you learn
It can be hard to trust our staff to work independently when every decision feels huge. Handing over responsibility either improves productivity now, or teaches through experience, improving productivity later.
Ditch the Dogma
Out-of-the-box management methodologies can provide useful tools for delivering Projects, but projects don't fail because the project manager didn't follow Agile, PRINCE2, Six Sigma, Kanban or CCPM methodolgies to the letter. Every organisation is different, so their needs differ too. Rather than rigidly sticking to any one methodology, you should take from all of them, using things that are best suited to your needs, and leaving behind anything that is unnecessary or counter-productive.
Win-win
Changes that benefit one stakeholder but make life more difficult for another, are not sustainable. It is worth the effort to find innovative solutions that benefit all stakeholders and make work-life genuinely better for everyone involved.
If it's worth doing twice, it's worth never doing again.
One-off tasks that are not repeatable can be done manually, but tasks that are likely to be repeated, should be automated as much as possible.
Long-term solutions over short-term fixes.
While short-term value may be achieved through quick fixes, these can lead to bigger issues in the long term. Improvements should be robust and sustainable to ensure long-term value.