Rebecca Fernandez

2111 points

Raleigh, NC

Rebecca Fernandez is a Principal Program Manager at Red Hat, leading projects to help the company scale its open culture. She's an Open Organization Ambassador, contributed to The Open Organization book, and maintains the Open Decision Framework. She is interested in the intersection of open source principles and practices, and how they can transform organizations for the better.

Open Source Champion Contributor Club Author Founding Member Open Organization Ambassador

Authored Content

The strategic divide: Why your employees aren’t delivering what you envision

Brand managers, customer experience executives, and marketing VPs, I need to tell you something. And it might hurt. Your strategies and innovations may be brilliant, but…

Open leadership, on demand

Every time there's an Open Your World Forum webcast, I mark my calendar. And every time, something comes up, and I miss the webcast. Fortunately for the absent-minded among us…

Belated thoughts on the “Building a Better Boss” webcast with Bob Sutton

Just last week, I realized I still hadn’t made time to listen to the webcast some fellow opensource.com contributors hosted with Bob Sutton last October. I’ve been an avid…

Education reform wars: Caricaturization, not disagreement, is the problem

I live in the middle of an ideological war zone. Wake County Public School System is the eighth largest school district in the United States, and one of the mostly highly…

Open business funding: New ideas for a new economy

Starting a business is always a bit of a gamble. But investing in a start-up is practically a guessing game. “A lot of venture capitalists will tell you that for early stage…

Four ways to undermine a community

At opensource.com, we often talk about ways to build and nourish communities. But sometimes what you do right is less important than what you’re doing wrong. We dug through…

Authored Comments

Rebecca

2 Jun 2016

Introducing the Open Decision Framework

Added a Markdown version for better version control. Thanks for the suggestion. :)

Rebecca

29 Sep 2015

The Open Organization book club: Embracing friction

Great topic. A few thoughts:

A very wise coworker recently said something that stuck with me. I'll paraphrase here: "You can't really expect to influence someone after you've insulted them." And that's true even if the other person insulted you first. :) In an environment where heated debate is the norm, like Red Hat, it's worth remembering that if you want to be heard as more than just noise.

You asked:
What are the most effective strategies for hearing everyone's thoughts—even those people who don't typically speak up?

I've often found myself returning to these 5 tips: https://opensource.com/business/15/5/5-ways-promote-inclusive-environme…

In particular:
* Interrupt interrupters
* Invite input from quiet and overlooked individuals

See link for specifics on the techniques - I've found them to be very, very effective.