The IT Blog

Category: Work Culture

  • “Ask for forgiveness, not permission” – The Real Cost of Moving Too Fast

    In Germany, there’s a saying: “Besser um Vergebung bitten als um Erlaubnis fragen” (“Better to ask for forgiveness than permission”) or “Gleich mal Fakten schaffen” (“Make decisions fast and set facts”). These phrases often glorify quick action, suggesting that speed leads to progress and success.

    Well, I can tell you right now — I really hate that mindset. It may look like a shortcut to success, but in reality, it often creates a mess that no one talks about. The consequences are rarely considered in the rush for fast decisions, and I’ve seen more harm than good come from it. What starts as quick success ends up piling up technical debt, inefficiencies, and unseen costs that will have to be dealt with – sooner or later. And like financial debt, technical debt piles up quietly, and the longer you delay paying it back, the more difficult it can get.

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  • Commander, Leader, Manager – What’s your Style?

    To be honest, I have never really given much thought to defining leadership styles. Over the years, I’ve seen a number of styles that I liked, disliked, admired, and some that I loathed.

    Recently, I worked on a project with a person whose approach felt very different from what I was used to. It really stood out and got me thinking about the different leadership styles I’ve seen over the years.

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  • The NPS Is Dead – How we killed it with Incentives

    I suppose most people in IT have encountered the Net Promoter Score (NPS) in some form. If you’re unfamiliar with it, just check out the Wikipedia article.

    In brief, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric used to gauge customer loyalty and satisfaction. It’s calculated by asking customers how likely they are to recommend a product or service on a scale from 0 to 10. The score is then derived by subtracting the percentage of detractors (those who score 0-6) from the percentage of promoters (those who score 9-10).

    It sounds good, and for a time, it served its original purpose well!

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  • Toxic Positivity and Whitewashing in Tech

    What I’ve been noticing and disliking more and more lately:

    All the whitewashing and toxic positivity!

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    Fediverse Reactions

  • Love it, Change it or Leave it

    The picture shows a CleanUpBag from LOWA GmbH that I once won in a promo from LOWA including the litter that I found (and collected) on a mountain hike. The reactions on social media were either “thank you” or anger at the people who leave the litter on the trails.

    And I can understand those who feel anger! I used to feel the same way!

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  • Audio and Video Quality in Online Meetings DOES matter

    We’ve all been there – endless online meetings, squinting at grainy screens, wondering if our colleagues are even awake. Seriously, how many online meeting does it take to realize that audio and video quality matter more than we want to admit?

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  • Why we need Feedback on the Feedback

    “Feedback is important!” – We’ve all heard this before. It’s an old adage.

    I guess we also agree that feedback without any following actions is not only useless but demotivating. People will learn very quickly that “giving Feedback” is obviously useless and thus will not give feedback anymore. – End of Feedback culture.

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  • The most important things about dailies …

    … and what you’ve never read about them:

    So, one of the most important reasons (besides the buzzword stuff), for me, is that I hear my colleagues. Not just WHAT they say, but HOW they say it.

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  • HomeOffice- vs Office-Discussion gone Wrong

    I just read an article on t3n about reasons to be in the office and reasons to stay in the HomeOffice. It’s an interesting read, just at one point I could have screamed (maybe I even did)! 🤦‍♂️

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  • The 3 pillars of transformation & change

    You can talk a lot about agility and transformation etc. – I believe there are 3 basic pillars and EVERYONE can contribute to “change”:

    • People who dare to speak up
    • People who listen to it
    • People who are willing to change

    Those three tings alone are already a turbo for many small things that are simply super boring in the masses.

    But also the other way round: if one of the three points is missing, save the energy – it won’t be successful.

    The bonus is public praise for everyone involved in the project (project participants != only project managers) – but let’s start with the basics ;-)