This episode is all about Leadership. I have Bernd Geropp with me. The man with Leadership in Mind. First of all I’m sure, everybody sooner or later comes across leading. Other leaders might affect you directly. Or you might become a leader by yourself. Because for this topic we’ll need a valid expert, I have asked Bernd to join us. Bernd Geropp is a successful consultant, inspiring trainer, and empathic coach for leadership. He’s a former company owner who has found his purpose in making better leaders.

Bernd leads German podcasting scene for Leadership topics. In Mehr Fuehren – Führung auf den Punkt gebracht” which is More leadership – Leading in a nutshell he contributes worthwhile details every week.

He has raised the Leadership-Platform to support his members becoming better leaders, get the coworkers they want and gain more time for the really important things.

We’re tackling topics about how to become a better leader. Or ways you can handle micro-management if you’re confronted with. And if you detect yourself has become a micro-manager you need to know what are the underlying reasons. Sooner or later, inevitably you stumble over trust. And how to become a better leader by building trust. However, it is very hard to build trust. While building trust you can also easily loose it in a second. As a result there are tons of obstacles and problems hidden underneath.

One good entry point would be to participate in Bernd’s 3-part video training How to become a better leader for free. He shows you the essentials about leading and delegation. If you’re capable of German you definitely should have a look into it.

Stay with me and enjoy the interview.

Essential Answers Provided In This Episode For:

• What do you think is the hidden purpose of micro-management?
• Why does extrinsic motivation not succeed?
• Which 3 things do intrinsically motivated people look for?
• How can you handle your micro-managing boss?
• Why thinking your boss is an idiot does not help you?
• How can you handle your own micro-managing?
• Why trust is essential for delegation?
• Why mistakes are essential for your managing carreer?
• And much more

Selected Links and Resources From This Episode

• More Leadership Bernd’s website in English
• Mehr Führen – Bernd’s Webseite auf Deutsch
• Some english videos by Bernd
• 3-part video course about how to become a better leader for free (German)

Thank You For Listening

Out of all the podcasts available in the Internet you tuned into mine, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this note. Also, I would be very happy if you would consider taking the minute it takes to leave an honest review or rating for the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. They’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the podcast. For sure I read every single one of them personally! Or, if you prefer a more direct contact, don't hesitate and drop me a note at [email protected]

The post The man with the “Leadership Mind” – Bernd Geropp – MES054 appeared first on Embedded Success.

This is the 2nd episode of my 2017 visit to the Embedded World exhibition in Nuremberg. For the 1st part please refer to this episode.

I have captured these details on my 2nd day at the Embedded World 2017 in Nuremberg. I once again want to present smaller companies. Of course always with interesting, sometimes even exciting offers. I do not want to ignore the bigger ones, however it’s like looking for nuggets. You have to dig deeper and scrutinize into the inner details. I would be very happy if you find something in for you which is worthwhile to share again. Please do not hesitate and forward this episode to your friends and colleagues.

You are a more visual person? You’d like to see some details? Then look at my day#2 video and  day #1 video at YouTube.

The Embedded World topics in this episode are:

• Cryptosource’s fleaTLS – a free TLS implementation designed for small footprint. Available royalty free in 3rd quarter 2017.
• Asaphus Vision presenting their Face Recognition Library. They support head- and eye-tracking and face-identification mainly, but not only, for self-driving vehicles.
• Timing suite for real-time systems by GLIWA. Supervise and collect timing- and stack-conditions on-the-fly in your embedded device.
• RTSoft supports you with experts for BSPs, drivers, middleware and APIs.
• HALCON is the machine vision solution by MVTec. They provide a versatile system supporting deep learning in visual data gathering.
• Grammatech’s binary code-analysis finally makes analysis of 3rd-party software possible, even you do not have the source-code available.
• My personal favorite of this day: Fraunhofer’s Equivert as new solution for dizziness therapy. An innovative idea presented as simple headphone with a lot of knowledge and experience inside. It gives dizzy patients the training they need to overcome their disease and step back into regular daily life.
• And more details and observations from this second day.

Thank You For Listening

Out of all the podcasts available in the Internet you tuned into mine, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this note. Also, I would be very happy if you would consider taking the minute it takes to leave an honest review or rating for the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. They’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the podcast. For sure I read every single one of them personally! Or, if you prefer a more direct contact, don't hesitate and drop me a note at [email protected]

The post Day 2 of the Embedded World – MES053 appeared first on Embedded Success.

In this episode it’s once again, as last year, all about the Embedded World exhibition in Nuremberg.

This year I travelled with my microphone and with my camera. It should be the first time for me to shoot photos and videos from an exhibition. I was planning to have at least one episode of a YouTube video available for you.

I succeeded! At least I collected rather a lot of material. Interesting details, great devices and sophisticated solutions.

See my day #1 video at YouTube, too.

The Embedded World topics in this episode are:

• HW-security for Qualcom chips. All provided by Rambus. I captured a nice piece of information about the way to harden your IoT-devices.
• Microchip’s solution for USB-2-ethernet bridge and their astonishing fault-tolerant Gigabit-ethernet-switch.
• IEI’s innovative gateway into IoT
• Why it is essential to have an eye-catcher. And how good examples look like.
• And more general observations and experiences on this very first day.

Thank You For Listening

Out of all the podcasts available in the Internet you tuned into mine, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this note. Also, I would be very happy if you would consider taking the minute it takes to leave an honest review or rating for the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. They’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the podcast. For sure I read every single one of them personally! Or, if you prefer a more direct contact, don't hesitate and drop me a note at [email protected]

The post Day 1 of the Embedded World – MES052 appeared first on Embedded Success.

Let’s have a short Wrap-Up of the MES’s episodes in 2016 before we focus on 2017 and how things might continue.

What were the main episode streams in 2016 in the Mastering Embeddeds Systems podcast? Was it the root-cause mini-series in the first half of the year? Or was it the series about Death March Projects? What about the interviews and the interesting characters we got in touch with? Or do we want to emphasize the personal improvement sessions in the last quarter of this year.

We have had marvellous guests in the show during this year:

• Rinding Jenkins with Oleg Nenashev from CloudBees in MES027
• Use multi-core CPUs instead of single-core and automatically transfer legacy code. Jeronimo Castrillon-Mazo from Silixica was in the show in MES031
• Big topic – Virtualization in Embedded Systems. We have welcome Baurzhan Ismagulov and Alexander Smirnov from Ilbers Technology. They gave a lot of information and details and presented their Mango bare-metal hypervisor in MES034
• In MES036 we have tackled
  Security in Embedded Systems with Andrej Nikishin from Kaspersky Labs
• Requirements Engineering was another big topic in 2016. We have had 3 different episodes with Joachim Reinke:
  • MES038 – Why do you need Requirements Engineering?
  • MES042 – How to relief your pain with requirements engineering?
  • In MES043 Joachim and myself have welcomed Jordan Kyriakidis and Trevor Bredley from QRAcorp. We discussed the way tools can support you in Requirements Engineering.
• In the last interview in 2016 there was Maik Pfingsten with us. In MES045 we talked about Maik’s way to maintain derailed projects.

In the finish of this episode I give you some outsights into the future of this podcast and further upcoming activities.

Selected Links and Resources From This Episode

• Spark at Adobe

Thank You For Listening

Out of all the podcasts available in the Internet you tuned into mine, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this note. Also, I would be very happy if you would consider taking the minute it takes to leave an honest review or rating for the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. They’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the podcast. For sure I read every single one of them personally! Or, if you prefer a more direct contact, don't hesitate and drop me a note at [email protected]

The post Year’s-End Wrap-Up 2016 – MES051 appeared first on Embedded Success.

The ESE-Kongress in Sindelfingen. More than 1.300 participants! 100 presentations! 3 days with 4 streams in parallel! Amazing!

The German Embedded Software Engineering Kongress is the second largest gathering of Embedded specialists in Europe. I gave my debut presentation with “No belly-flops with virtual teams”. But there are about 100 other presentations in 4 parallel streams on three days. From 29th, November until 1st, December people belonging to the Embedded realm has their gathering in Sindelfingen. It’s a great happening with interesting persons presenting stunning talks, new topics and detailed insights.

I picked three topics – diverting, trendy and versatile. It’s of course no representative selection. There were lots of topics from various areas: architecture, real-time and multi-core, safety and security, implementation, open source, IoT, Industrie 4.0, automotive, test and quality, Agile, software engineering and last not least management.

Selected pickings

• Hardware faults in safety critical systems
• The renaissance of Ada
• Agile development processes in normative regulated environments

Stay tuned and be inspired.

Selected Links and Resources From This Episode

• The ESE Kongress – Germany’s Largest Congress for Professional Embedded Software Engineering
• Embedded Conference Scandinavia
• QNX
• ADA Core
• Who’s using ADA?
• ADA compilers available on various platforms
• Parallel ADA – A Requirement for ADA 2020
• Heisenbug
• Scrum QA at Berner-Mattner
• My experience as a QA in Scrum
• Some troubles understanding Scrum QA

Thank You For Listening

Out of all the podcasts available in the Internet you tuned into mine, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this note. Also, I would be very happy if you would consider taking the minute it takes to leave an honest review or rating for the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. They’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the podcast. For sure I read every single one of them personally! Or, if you prefer a more direct contact, don't hesitate and drop me a note at [email protected]

The post 3 pickings from ESE-Kongress 2016 – MES050 appeared first on Embedded Success.

You were misunderstood.

Although you have spent a lot of effort to be precise and clear. But nevertheless somehow your counterpart has horribly misunderstood you. And now you’re in big trouble. Perhaps your spouse interpreted your “Nice” for the new dress as inadequate. Or there was this tone of desinterest in your voice. Or you just run into this ugly problem at work and your mind is still in the office. You all remember what happens after such situation. Something has gone wrong. How can we avoid such kind of situation?

Paul Watzlawick once said “We cannot not communicate”.

Everything we say OR not say, everything we do OR not do, transfers a message. We cannot decide whether we communicate or do not communicate. We always communicate. Communication happens verbally and non-verbally, explicitely and implicitely. We should be aware that a risen eyebrow, a turn-away face, a dismissive look transfers information to the receiver.

But there are ways to improve communcation and decrease misunderstanding. In this episode I will introduce the Four Sides Model for communcation. Friedemann Schulz von Thun has invented this abstraction to let us understand communication ways better. This model gives you a strong background to improve your communcation. In detail I will share with you nine surprisingly simple tips to improve your communication.

You guys should listen to this episode if you want to understand why communicating could sometimes be that complicated, erroneous or misleading. If you want to improve your skills herein you’re exactly right in this session. If you want to get the tips in written form, feel free to use the link below to get your personal copy of the tips-list.

Stay tuned and be inspired.

Essential Answers Provided In This Episode For:

• Why do we sometimes communicate that weird?
• What does communicating mean at all?
• How does the Four Side Model work?
• What can go wrong in communication?
• What does good communication mean?
• Why listening is essential for good communication?
• Why pictures or stories support you?
• How can body talk impact the meaning of messages?
• And much much more.

Selected Links and Resources From This Episode

• Four Side Model of communication
• Models of Communication
• Paul Watzlawick
• Start with Mindfulness

Thank You For Listening

Out of all the podcasts available in the Internet you tuned into mine, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this note. Also, I would be very happy if you would consider taking the minute it takes to leave an honest review or rating for the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. They’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the podcast. For sure I read every single one of them personally! Or, if you prefer a more direct contact, don't hesitate and drop me a note at [email protected]

The post 9 surprisingly simple tips to improve your communcation – MES049 appeared first on Embedded Success.

It’s a pity.

That most of us find their best time in staying in their Comfort Zone. In this hammock of regular habits. Full of cosy feelings, thoughts and emotions. Of course, we all have our regular habits, the routins. In the morning in the bathroom or in the evening going to bed. We also follow our inner boosters telling us to be perfect, punctual, or push ourselves and hurry up. But it’s really sad, that we regularly get stuck in this zone.

Our Comfort Zone is supposed to keep our life safe. But what it really does is keep our life small. Outside of our comfort zone there seems to be lot of interesting amazing things. Possibilities without end. But it’s outside. And before we can get in touch with these endless possibilities, we have to tackle the wall of pain. Lots of pain are waiting: denial, uncertainty, helplessness or fear. There’s a way to overcome this wall. But first you need to understand the paradoxon of pain.

In this episode I wanted to share with you a tool I have detected some time ago. The Tool “Reversal of Desire” was introduced by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels. And it is their gift to all of us who want to lift ourselves to the next level. A tool to propell you out of your comfort zone. That you get in touch with your possibilities overcoming the pain.

Stay tuned and be inspired.

Essential Answers Provided In This Episode For:

• Wy do we have a Comfort Zone?
• Why do we love it?
• What does the Comfort Zone do with us?
• How can we get out of our Comfort Zone?
• What’s the Pain Paradoxon?
• Why does the Tool work?
• What’s the Higher Force?
• When do use the Tool?
• How to find courage in your fear?
• And much much more.

Selected Links and Resources From This Episode

• Reversal of Desire – The Tool on YouTube
• The Tools by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels

Thank You For Listening

Out of all the podcasts available in the Internet you tuned into mine, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this note. Also, I would be very happy if you would consider taking the minute it takes to leave an honest review or rating for the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. They’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the podcast. For sure I read every single one of them personally! Or, if you prefer a more direct contact, don't hesitate and drop me a note at [email protected]

The post Say YES to your pain and step out of your Comfort Zone – MES048 appeared first on Embedded Success.

Avoid managing your time – MES047

This is the first episode of my new mini-series “Improve Yourself”. This series is based on the results of my last survey on my podcast listeners. We’ll start today with the episode of Time-Management.

Is it really possible to manage time? To do Time-Management? I do not think so. Because time is something we cannot impact or manipulate. The only thing we can do is to change our way to experience time passing by.

And this change of perspective drops away all these usual Time-Mangement tools, books, courses, hints and tricks. But you get confronted with yourself. Everybody of us lives in the same time. But some of us seem to have sufficient time. Others seem to always exceed their amount and do not succeed in time.

The question is: why is it like that? And what can we do as individuals to get the best out of our time? This episode will support you here. Detect your next steps to realize things which are really important to you. And then start.

Stay tuned and be inspired.

Essential Answers Provided In This Episode For:

• Why time management tipps and tools do not work
• What are the inner benefits for self-made time problems?
• If we cannot manage time, what else can we do?
• Which 3 things have changed my life belonging time?
• How does the Zegarnik-effect prevent you from being free in your time?
• Why the Five-Minute-Journal might be the best things to start?
• And much much more.

Selected Links and Resources From This Episode

• HeadSpace – Treat your head right
• The Five Minute Journal
• The Zeigarnik Effect
• Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod

Thank You For Listening

Out of all the podcasts available in the Internet you tuned into mine, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this note. Also, I would be very happy if you would consider taking the minute it takes to leave an honest review or rating for the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. They’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the podcast. For sure I read every single one of them personally! Or, if you prefer a more direct contact, don't hesitate and drop me a note at [email protected]

The post Avoid managing your time – MES047 appeared first on Embedded Success.

Do you have ever thought about the aftermath for your root cause analysis? What should be done if you have found the real cause of your problem? What do you regularly do after you have made your correction?
By the way – do you know whether your correction really corrects the problem? That it only corrects the problem? And does not introduce a ton of new problems?

In this episode it’s all about what’s coming after the problem’s analysis.

I have given you 3 examples of how to find the root cause of your problem: 5-Whys, Ishikawa and Enhanced Cause-Effect. But finding the root cause is not the end, but the beginning of the whole story. There is so much more in it.

You should listen to this episode if you have to analyse problems with a significant depth. And if you want to know what you can do after you have done the root cause analysis? What are the next steps?

This episode will support you in improving the outcome of your root cause analysis. You will get an idea how to achieve consistent, substantial, and reliable ways to proceed with your analysis.

I have composed a checklist you are free to use to improve your root cause analysis. It will provide you several questions to enlarge your perspective of the problem situation, your correction and your next steps. Feel free to download the checklist here.

Stay tuned and be inspired.

 

Essential Answers Provided In This Episode For:

• How to get one step ahead of regular root cause-analysis?
• What do we miss after regular root cause analysis?
• What’s this Kaizen and Yokoten about?
• Do you really improve? Or do you only pretend to improve?
• Why you should not stop directly after the root cause analysis
• What kind of questions should you raise to enhance your understanding of the situation?
• How to establish or improve your process?
• And much much more.

Selected Links and Resources From This Episode

• MES009 – Finding root causes with 5-Whys
• MES014 – Finding root-causes with Ishikawa
• MES029 – Find root causes with the Enhanced Cause-Effect approach
• The ESE Kongress – Germany’s Largest Congress for Professional Embedded Software Engineering

Thank You For Listening

Out of all the podcasts available in the Internet you tuned into mine, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this note. Also, I would be very happy if you would consider taking the minute it takes to leave an honest review or rating for the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. They’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the podcast. For sure I read every single one of them personally! Or, if you prefer a more direct contact, don't hesitate and drop me a note at [email protected]

The post It’s a shame that you do not make the best out of your root cause analysis – MES046 appeared first on Embedded Success.

Sometimes people ask me: “What’s that about project troubleshooting? What does it mean? Who does anybody need this kind of stuff? What are you guys doing? And what’s the benefit at the end?” I want to provide some answers on these question. I have invited a friend of mine, who has worked as project troubleshooter for a decade. Maik Pfingsten is an elaborated engineer, a versatile project leader and he has saved a lot of projects under rough conditions. He meanwhile works as mentor, speaker, author and coach for specific topics round about projects in trouble.

He tells us a lot about his very personal way of coping with projects in trouble. About the regular steps he has used and the experiences he has gathered during his long journey.

You should listen to this episode if your project is in trouble and you have already thought about some external support. Or you want to know details how such kind of external consulting might look like. And it will become especially worthwhile if you consider to work yourself as project troubleshooter, but you do not yet exactly know whether it is the right way. But, of course, you also can listen only if you’re simply interested in the topic

This episode will support you in understanding the different steps how derailed projects might find their way out of trouble. What kind of essentials you have to take into account. And perhaps also whether this approach is the right one for you, your project or your company.

Stay with me and enjoy the chat.

Essential Answers Provided In This Episode For:

• How to become a project troubleshooter?
• What kind of skill do you have to work successfully as a troubleshooter?
• Why does Maik follow a specific plan to cope with derailed projects?
• How does the system footprint supports different perspectives?
• Why Maik protects the project team first?
• Why stepping out is that essential for the troubleshooter.
• Highlight for the ESE-Kongress 2016 in Sindelfingen
• And much much more.

Selected Links and Resources From This Episode

• One of Maik’s Podcasts: Zukunftsarchitekten – Systems Engineering Leadership
• Maik in LinkedIn
• Maik in Xing
• Maik in Twitter @mpfingsten
• The ESE Kongress – Germany’s Largest Congress for Professional Embedded Software Engineering

Thank You For Listening

Out of all the podcasts available in the Internet you tuned into mine, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this note. Also, I would be very happy if you would consider taking the minute it takes to leave an honest review or rating for the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. They’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the podcast. For sure I read every single one of them personally! Or, if you prefer a more direct contact, don't hesitate and drop me a note at [email protected]

The post Tech-Chat: How to maintain derailed projects with Maik Pfingsten – MES045 appeared first on Embedded Success.

Right before my holiday I have made a bad experience. Some meetings with a vendor have gone sub-optimal to say the least.
There were several road blocks and nit-picking details which brought the meetings close to waste of time.

However it was a good opportunity to observe what could be done much more better when talking with vendors for technical problems. I have run a lot of such talks and I wanted to take this bad situation as trigger to collect my 5 hacks to get the most out of vendor discussions.

You should listen to this episode if you will sooner or later found yourself confronted with your boss’ request: “Hey man, let’s discuss with vendor #XYZ. They should support us here.” And with “let us” he of course means you. Or you’ve already talked with your vendor (or vendors) and you again and again observe some counterproductive situations, but you do not exactly know how to improve them.

This episode enhances you to finish vendor discussions better as average. Or if you’re the vendor, you know exactly whether your customer is well prepared and honest with you in his request for explicit support.

Stay with me and enjoy the chat.

Essential Answers Provided In This Episode For:

• Why do we need to talk with the vendor?
• Why becomes the meeting invitation that essential?
• When you should cancel the meeting directly?
• How can you prepare for the meeting with your vendor?
• What kind of additional communication channels should you maintain during the meeting?
• When will superiors in the meeting become counterproductive?
• Why writing of minutes is the key-point in control?
• And much much more.

Selected Links and Resources From This Episode

• Episode #8 – How to successfully launch a task-force
• Meeting invitation template
• Episode #35 – 5 simple tweaks to use Mind-Maps for meeting minutes

Thank You For Listening

Out of all the podcasts available in the Internet you tuned into mine, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this note. Also, I would be very happy if you would consider taking the minute it takes to leave an honest review or rating for the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. They’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the podcast. For sure I read every single one of them personally! Or, if you prefer a more direct contact, don't hesitate and drop me a note at [email protected]

The post 5 hacks to succeed in discussions with your vendor – MES044 appeared first on Embedded Success.