Experience making tradeoff decisions between the quality of a product and the speed it is delivered to the market. As a member of a team, you will work to deliver a product to market that has more value than your competitors. Parts of your product work as designed: Other parts are defective. You must remove defects, but if you spend too much time removing them, the value of  your product will decline.

Have you every compared your skills to another person? How about upping the comparison by comparing yourself to an earlier version of yourself? In this article, I compare my skills today with my skills 20 years earlier.

First published by Software Testing and Quality Magazine Volume 2 Issue 2 March/April 2000

When faced with a problem, I suggest considering three strategies:

• Coping
• Managing
• Solving

In my first entry on employee rewards, I emphasized the importance of knowing the recipient well enough to reward them with something that is meaningful to them.

But there is more to effective reward programs than providing a meaningful award. Let's take a step back and explore answers to the questions: What is the purpose of a reward program? How can we innovate to make reward programs more effective?

The social awkwardness of an extreme introvert -- a loner-- confounds most extroverts. Extroverts prefer using social interaction as a big part of the problem solving process while a loner prefers solving problems without social interaction.

Can a loner be a contributing member on a collaborative team?

What typically happens when product development decides to create a superior product? Answer, slower delivery and costlier development than previous products. Why?

The people whose opinion counts the most choose to go for faster delivery speed. Their thinking may be sound; in this case, they want to beat their competitors to market.

Choosing faster product delivery visibly sacrifices product quality and, in my experience, it often invisibly sacrifices the economy of product support. In this post, I answer the following questions:

• What is a tradeoff?
• What distinguishes a conscious from an unconscious tradeoff?
• What is the impact of trading off quality for speed?
• What can you do to change the choice?

My job and my passion is to help you untangle complex problems so both you and your organization produce the results you need.

The following is a sample of what clients and colleagues are saying about me on LinkedIn:

"I like and trust Steve."

"In a world of consultants trying to figure out what to say to make you pay them more money, Steve is a truly independent trustworthy agent."

"Steve is awesome and smart." 

"For years, I have benefited from Steve's sage advice when I needed to make key decisions."

"Steve was the go to guy when it came to getting teams working effectively."

"If you'd like to improve the effectiveness of your technology teams (or any teams), Steve is the consultant for you."

"Steve was an ultimate resource in satisfying a challenging customer."

"Steve's meetings are the most productive I have ever experienced."

"Not only is he (Steve) creative and thought-provoking, but I found his ideas very 'sticky'."

"If you can possibly get into Steve's class or workshop, Do it!!"

I am an independent management consultant and coach, a public speaker, a workshop leader, a published author who writes essays about effective management. as well as a founder and host of the annual Amplifying Your Effectiveness (AYE) Conference, at which I lead experiential workshops about individual, team, and organizational effectiveness.

Let's explore the nature of effectiveness --