All Johanna's Solo Leanpub Books

Is it time for a new job? How do you find a job that matches what you have to offer, that matches what you value in a culture?

Treat your job hunt like the project it is. Use a visual system to track your job search to increase your productivity, track your progress, evaluate your work, gain feedback, and throw out what doesn’t work while building on your successes. Learn from your past career to optimize for your next step. Full of tips, stories, and humor, you’ll apply practical techniques to take control of the most important project you’ll ever work on: find your next best job.

Do you want to hire great people? Not sure how? Read this book.

Knowledge workers---our geeks---are different from skill-based staff, which makes hiring great ones difficult. But whether you're a manger or team member, this is the single most important decision you can make due to its long-lasting impact.

Because great geeks adapt their knowledge to your context, one developer or technical manager is not interchangeable with another. Hiring the right geeks, the ones who fit your culture, requires you to analyze your culture, determine your problems and define the essential qualities you want in your candidates. Hiring Geeks That Fit removes the guesswork from the hiring process, reduces the risk for costly hiring mistakes... and allows you to find the absolute best person for the job.

• Understand your culture to build a strong hiring foundation.
• Develop the best hiring strategy.
• Analyze your open position. What's really essential?
• Develop effective ads for different mediums, such as social media and user groups.
• Develop behavior-description questions to differentiate the talkers from those who've actually performed work relevant to your needs.
• Use those questions in phone-screens, in-person interviews, and references.
• Treat candidates with respect, so even those you reject are potential referrals.
• Create great first-day hire experiences so your new hire doesn't keep looking...

And much more...

You, your team, and your organization will live with the long-term consequences of your hiring decision. Invest the time for you and your team in how to hire and interview will pay off fast.

Scale collaboration, not process.

If you’re trying to use agile and lean at the program level, you’ve heard of several approaches, all about scaling processes. If you duplicate what one team does for several teams, you get bloat, not delivery. Instead of scaling the process, scale everyone's collaboration.

With autonomy, collaboration, and exploration, teams and program level people can decide how to apply agile and lean to their work.

Learn to collaborate around deliverables, not meetings. Learn which measurements to use and how to use those measures to help people deliver more of what you want (value) and less of what you don’t want (work in progress). Create an environment of servant leadership and small-world networks. Learn to enable autonomy, collaboration, and exploration across the organization and deliver your product.

Scale collaboration with agile and lean program management and deliver your product.

Do you want to become an independent consultant? You'd like to extend your employee-based success to potential clients. How can you get to the point where your potential clients ask for you by name?

Look no further. This practical guide to building your "consulting engine" and creating systems for your business has everything you need to become a successful independent consultant. 

You'll learn how to:

* Assess your value so you can choose which problems to solve for your ideal clients.

* Attract clients on ongoing content marketing.

* Create relationships with the people across the client organization and with other consultants

* Set reasonable fees.

* Create and manage your intellectual property.

* Learn from the engagement to reassess your value.

And much more.

As you consult, you can assess and change your business model for the flexibility you need for _your_ business. 

This practical guide will show you how to succeed—and on your terms. 

Buy this book to start now, improve your existing practice, or prepare for the future. You can become a successful independent consultant.

If you have trouble estimating cost or schedule for your projects, you are not alone. The question is this: who wants the estimate and why?

You might be able to use different words for your estimate. You might be able to report your estimate in a way that helps your managers realize the uncertainty of the estimate. Maybe you just need the team who’s doing the work to estimate.

Learn practical and pragmatic ways to estimate schedule or cost for your projects. Learn why most estimates are wrong, and how you can create some sanity about your estimates. Learn ways to present your estimates so people will accept them. And, when your estimate is wrong, learn what you can do.

Can you, as a manager, lead innovation? Yes. Although, you might never have seen innovation in management—and that’s a problem. You are not alone.

Innovative leaders encourage change. They create just enough organizational rules. Those rules help people and teams make good decisions.

Based on research, backed up by personal stories, you'll see how modern managers create innovation throughout the organization.

Through questions and stories, learn how you can:

·     Use the seven principles of modern management to create an environment where the managers work in teams.

·     Increase the organization's ability to deliver your products and services.

·     Plan by value.

·     Welcome experiments and learn from them.

·     Invite change, instead of fear it.

·     And, much more.

With its question and myth, each chapter offers you options to rethink how you can create innovation in management and across the organization.

You'll see how common—but ill-advised—management practices prevent great business outcomes. Instead, learn how to lead innovation in management and across the organization. Your customers and teams will both be delighted.

Become a modern manager. Learn to lead an innovative organization.

Are you working on projects you suspect you shouldn’t be? Are you multitasking? Are you out of ideas as to what to do?

It’s time to manage your project portfolio. These twelve ideas will prompt you to consider more ideas about how to manage your project portfolio. Learn how to ask the zeroth question, how to stop doing the work you shouldn’t do, and how to find some breathing room.

Use these ideas to start managing your project portfolio, instead of multitasking or “trying” to do it all. Take back your days and your projects.

How can you be the best manager you can be, especially under all the pressure you feel? If you've never seen excellent management, you might not know what "best" looks like—and that's a problem. You are not alone.

Great managers create an environment where people can do their best work. These excellent managers lead and serve others—not control them.

Based on research and backed up by personal stories, this book will show you how modern managers lead and serve others.

Through questions and stories, learn how you can:

• Use the seven principles of modern management to create an environment where the team functions as a unit.
• Create more capability in each person and as a team.
• Create an engaged team or workgroup.
• Create an environment to support people as they manage their careers and eliminate the need for performance reviews.
• Support teams as they can learn to manage themselves.
• And, much more.

With its question and myth, each chapter offers you options to rethink how you lead and serve others.

You'll see how common—but ill-advised—management practices prevent great business outcomes. Instead, learn how to lead and serve your teams so they can deliver products and services your customers will pay for and use.

Become a modern manager. Learn to lead and serve others to deliver the results everyone needs.

How can you be the best manager you can be?

If you've never seen excellent management, you might not know what "best" looks like—and that's a problem. You are not alone.

Modern management requires we first manage ourselves—and that might be the most challenging part of management. Based on research, backed up by personal stories, you'll see examples of unwise and excellent management. You can then choose from several options to improve your management results.

Through questions, stories, and proven options, learn how you can:

• Use the seven principles of modern management to create an environment where everyone can thrive.
• Recognize and avoid micromanagement.
• Support the people doing the work to solve more of their problems.
• Make time to think so you can be your best self.
• Trust the people you lead and serve.
• And, much more.

With its question and myth, each chapter offers you options to rethink how you manage yourself.

You'll see earn how common—but ill-advised—management practices prevent you from enabling the people you lead and serve.

Become a modern manager. Learn to manage yourself so you and the people you lead and serve can deliver the results everyone needs.

Do you dream of speaking at a conference? You want to share your successes---and maybe your failures. You can learn to write a conference proposal that has a good chance of being accepted. Instead of starting with the title, start with the outcomes. When you do, you'll craft a proposal that the conference will take.

Learn to:

• Start with the outcomes
• Create a compelling abstract
• Invite readers with your title
• Connect to your readers with your bio

While I can't guarantee the program committee will accept your proposal, you have a much better chance with these ideas.

Free your inner nonfiction writer as you learn to write fast and well.

Do you want to write nonfiction better and faster? But when you try to write, you feel stuck, or you don't like what you wrote, or you're not sure why anyone would want to read your words. 

You can enjoy writing, especially when you integrate thinking and learning as you write. And, when you wait to edit until the end, you can write faster. Learn how to educate, influence, and entertain people with your writing.

You'll learn how to:

• Separate writing, which includes thinking and learning, from editing.
• Focus on your readers, so you write what they need to know.
• Face your writing fears.
• Find your author voice, so you sound like you.
• Be ready to write, so you never have to face a blank page. 
• Empathize with your readers to write about what matters to them.
• How to edit just enough.
• Evolve your writing system.

And more.

Buy this book and learn how to write nonfiction to educate, influence, and entertain.

Does your agile project feel like a death march, with immovable deadlines, long backlogs, and no time to do the work right? If so, you're not alone. Fake agility has your project by the throat and won't let go. 

You don't have to work like this. Instead, you can design your approach to manage the project, product, and organizational risks. 

Neither a waterfall nor an agile approach fits all projects in all organizations. Given your risks, use your culture to create as much agility as possible. You can design your project lifecycle and deliver what your customers need. 

This book will help you learn how to:

• Assess your project, product, and organization risks that affect how you can choose to work.  
• Determine which feedback loops and decisions your project and product need for success.
• Recognize an agile team culture and characteristics. 
• When to consider which lifecycle.
• How to design a lifecycle that works for you in this project, with this team, for this product, with as much agility as possible.

Don't settle for fake agility and a joyless workplace. Buy this book now to incorporate real agility into your work.