Kelley Marsh

I make things better. I amuse myself in the meantime.

Category: Management

  • Are you my leader?

    If you asked me what I’m good at, I’d say administration. I’m not always the big idea person, but I know how to get big ideas done. I’m reading this book about leadership, and I’m no where near as comfortable with that moniker. Am I a leader? I lead my team, surely. Why don’t I…

  • Paperweights and Change

    I’m sitting at home, watching these big fat flakes of snow fall, waiting for a call. We’re currently a 1 car household, the other car having just transformed into the world’s largest paperweight in the parking lot of Wegmans. We’ll head back to meet the tow truck driver when he calls to say he’s on…

  • A Discourse on No

    I’m a member of a few Project Manager-ish type groups on LinkedIN. Recently, there was a big discussion about how to say No to a client. Some of my favorite answers from the discussion: Just Don’t Say No Use data and options to deliver the message instead of outright No to the receiver. Threaten With…

  • A well-oiled decision making machine

    I’m helping a buddy with his site, doing some analysis of the analytics to see what’s working and what isn’t, and to try to identify some places where he could bump up the site’s revenue a bit. The whole things feels quite luxurious. It’s a side project for him, and I’m just doing it for…

  • Proactive, not reactive

    I keep a little note on my desk at work to remind me of the one thing I need to be above all else: Proactive – not reactive. This post was in my feed reader today, and I appreciate the message. Sometimes, we are so busy running around fixing the consequences of problems that we…

  • Get used to being uncomfortable

    After going through the Certified Scrum Master class (I am fancy now!), I’ve been re-evaluating how projects are ‘managed’ at work. We are not fully agile, but we’ve been slowly applying some of the agile concepts and structures to our workflows. In an agency environment, where projects are fast, furious, and many at the same…

  • Unexpectedly delightful

    I walked by our “atta-boy” wall the other day and realized that I hadn’t updated it in a while. I used to be better about pointing out our successes, both as a team and as individuals, and I have let that fall by the wayside. I do deeply appreciate the staff here. And I need…

  • Shifting expectations

    I have a client that we have favored highly over the past few weeks – often at the expense of other clients, or at the expense of my development staff’s sanity. After riding out a wave of unforeseen emergencies, we are now transitioning into a regular maintenance schedule. It’s difficult, at times, to transition clients…

  • Accountability, responsibility, and trust

    One of the fascinating things about agile team structure is the delineation between responsibility and accountability. While I may be in charge of making sure something gets done, I may not actually be the one to perform the work. I am accountable to a task without being responsible for actually doing it. As a scrum…

  • We can’t all possibly be the expert, all the time.

    This video has been making the rounds via social media: It’s painful and hilarious at the same time. The thought that niggles at the back of my brain is how everyone identifies with the expert – and we can’t all possibly be the expert.  Surely, there are times that we play each role in this…

  • The cost of what you want

    An excellent point: When you stand and petulantly demand some course of action without regard for the bigger picture, you immediately place yourself into a tiny little box. This person doesn’t understand the full scope of what he is asking, so I can disregard this particular request. Sure, you might know what you are talking about (might…

  • Who is going to look out for me?

    Expanding spiritual capacity requires subordinating our own needs to something beyond our self-interest.  Because we often perceive our own needs as urgent, shifting attention away from them can prompt very primitive survival fears.  If I truly focus my attention on others, we worry, who is going to look out for me? — The Power of…