Author Archives: Mike Dent

Why accountability without empowerment is a sign of a toxic culture

TLDR; you can’t expect accountability without giving people context and freedom first. Accountability: the fact or condition of being accountable; responsibility.Autonomy: the right or condition of self-government.Empowerment: authority or power given to someone to do something. Accountability, autonomy and empowerment are words often used by organisations, used more frequently in isolation than together, to describeContinue reading “Why accountability without empowerment is a sign of a toxic culture”

You can either be right, or you can be happy

On how being self aware is a bitch, why wanting to be right all the time is bad, and what that has to do with anything The cruel irony about trying to become more self aware is that it makes you more aware of the dick moves that you’ve been making in your life untilContinue reading “You can either be right, or you can be happy”

Lessons from trying to be Agile in a Waterfall industry

Nine months ago my journey led me back into R&D in the life sciences industry, working with (amongst other things) software in a medical setting. The healthcare industry is clearly heavily regulated. Moving from releasing web products several times a week to software that’s released a few times a year (if you’re lucky) has beenContinue reading “Lessons from trying to be Agile in a Waterfall industry”

Why we should think before labelling someone as a millennial

My degree was in astrophysics. When I mentioned that I studied astronomy to people, the response, “can you read my horoscope?” was more common than I’d have liked. Why did that bother me? It wasn’t that people didn’t know what astrophysics was, or even that they were probably just trying to wind me up (success).Continue reading “Why we should think before labelling someone as a millennial”