business category archives
In the middle of the behind the scenes video on how they built the Rube Goldberg machine for the OK Go video, Adam Sadowsky repeats the words in the title of this piece.
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Henrik Mårtensson has a nice discussion of how an extreme focus on "cost effectiveness" can severely damage an organization with this mindset.
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People don't like change, right? I came across an article by Richard Veryardthat seems to be part of a larger discussion. It's a beautiful example of where the focus on the software brings you a failure.
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Matt Moore has a fun item about a severe disorder that strikes many companies, PEITSD - Post ERP Implementation Traumatic Stress Disorder. I love this, as it is both funny AND (sadly) true.
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Matt Homann posted a list of Ten Rules of Law Firm Retreats, but I think these are equally applicable to just about any time you take people off to discuss how things are going in the business or how to improve the business.
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Mark Gould has a discussion of "best practice" that reminds me just how important it is to have a regular policy of looking for other examples of how something has been done before doing it myself.
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In case you think I am a dyed-in-the-wool Theory of Constraints promoter, I point to this article by Dan Trietsch from a 2005 issue of Project Management Journal.
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Phillip G. Armour discusses is the nature of people in groups. There are people (often leaders of some sort) whose behavior sets the tone for the whole group.
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Lucas McDonnell had a nice post on 6 signs your knowledge management strategy is in trouble. One could imagine some other signs too.
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The April 2009 McKinsey Quarterly has an article that got my blood boiling by just reading the title, "The irrational side of change management." Fortunately, the article by Carolyn Aiken and Scott Keller isn't quite so inflammatory once you actually read it.
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Patrick Lencioni was the keynote speaker today at the Project Flow conference. He did a great job of speaking on the topic of "Building a Culture of Teamwork and Engagement" with a focus on telling hilarious stories about business and himself. I suspect you could pick up a lot of the below from reading his books, but here is a summary of the 90 minutes he spent with us today.
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Are you subject to lots of clichés? Are you a frequent user of clichés? Be careful. Phillip G Armour writes about this.
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Mary Abraham, always interesting, has a good one that relates to something I heard recently from one of my clients.
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Clarke Ching mentioned a brief HBR article, "Are great companies ... just lucky?" The essential idea reflects concerns of the Halo Effect, that exemplar companies are just those that have whethered the storms of chance better than others - not that they've done anything unique to survive.
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You always need to be careful when an article starts with "In today's economic climate", but I like what Art Murray is saying in this KM World article in his Future of the Future column, "An opportunity for real change" (in business structure).
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A few people mentioned Jonathan Spira's post on "Defining Productivity for the Knowledge Age." He defines the basic problem and promises more in upcoming writing. It will be interesting to see what he has to say.
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Nancy Dixon and Tom Gilmore have an interesting entry on the idea of help, "When is Help Helpful?: The Capacity to Make Use of Help." No wonder "helpful" programs don't always succeed.
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Innovation and management are difficult to connect. Innovation is inherently messy and requires openness, freedom, fluidity. Management (traditionally) seeks structure and control.
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Shawn Callahan posted the Anecdote Collaboration framework back in November 2008, and I have been pondering it since. He's been thinking and talking on the topic for a while.
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Valdis Krebs has another news-related network analysis in "Power in Economic Networks." This time, covering the European natural gas network, which is dominated by Russia.
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Entertaining, short video on work life in the "future."
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This financial crisis has done a lot of things for the world, including inspiring people to write entertaining and informative articles on the situation.
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The interesting thing to me was a find that Chris had from Bob Buckman, father of some of the earliest examples of understanding the value behind knowledge management. Chris found a list of seven points that describe the ultimate idea-sharing system.
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James Robertson has an initial model of collaboration, based on the idea that you have to form the capacity, then build the capability, and then create a strategy around how it fits into your organization.
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Mary Abraham writes about how metrics can drive the wrong behavior (or the wrong conclusions) in "The Metrics Mess."
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I have seen two articles on business incubators this week. It's not something I usually worry about, but the coincidence strange.
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Many people in knowledge management and social media have expressed frustration in defining return-on-investment or payback for implementing one of these projects.
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If you are interested in corporate uptake of the services that let people connect with one another to share experience, knowledge and ideas, it might be smart to come up with another term than "social networking."
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I came across an interesting article that provides Jay Deragon and socialutions' perspective on preparing for implementing social networks. I hear in these tips echos of almost any change effort.
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Sigurd Rinde has a piece on the purpose of information technology that rings a bell for me. "Teaching how to fish - IT's ultimate purpose"
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A few people have mentioned the McKinsey survey report on "Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey Results." The thing I found most interesting was the list of barriers to implementation.
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Johanna Rothman has a podcast on "How Many Emergency Projects Do You Have?" in which she answer that question for a project manager. My thought was that this thinking is endemic to business. And that the behavior usually demonstrates the exact wrong answer.
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It's a familiar refrain, once you get into the business world far enough. "Don't conufse technology with business solutions, focusing instead on what users value most - information."
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The AMA Moving Ahead newsletter tells us something that isn't terribly new: "New Grad Hires: Ready and Willing, but Are They Able?."
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I've come across the "Leading with Insight" slides from Matthew Milan that touches on some interesting ideas on insight.
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The concept of the supply chain is applied to talent management in a recent HBR IdeaCast with Peter Cappelli, and I am reminded of Reaching the Goal by John Ricketts.
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The AMA Moving Ahead newsletter for February 2008 includes the article "How to Disagree with Your Boss—and Win." But my brain is funny: I misread the first line.
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A number of friends pointed to 50 reasons not to change and the accompanying graphic from the Biocultural Science & Management Blog.
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Q: What’s the easiest way to charge money for software?
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Via StumbleUpon, I found Idiagram's / Marshall Clemens' beautifully-illustrated The Art of Complex Problem Solving with mouse-over detail to the baseline graphic.
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Many things can happen in 20 years. In early October, Gary Hamel (and Tom Stewart) re-asked "What Does the Future of Management Look Like to You?" There have been a lot of responses since then.
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My friend and MeshForum colleague, Shannon Clark, is a consummate networker. He has some "Networking Advice - useful business cards and other tips."
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At least two items in my stream today have to do with effective meetings. One comes from CIO.com, Eight Steps to More Effective Meetings, and the other from the BusinessWeek Climbing the Ladder podcast on Managing Teams.
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Craigslist CEO, Jim Buckmaster, has an interesting management philosophy. Besides being the CEO who puts profits second, he has some refreshing views on how things should work on the inside.
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Andrew McAfee has a pair of interesting articles on decision making in the world of cheap and fast information transfer. I am interested because decision making is one of the key aspects of management.
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Another interesting discussion from Sig at Thingamy: mindless stuff and leadership vs. management. He starts with an example of "managing" teenagers and gets to the key that they can only be led.
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Just to be clear that Director Magazine is completely negative on blogging, here is an article in the May 2007 issue, Strategic business blogging by Matthew Stibbe.
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After writing about how important it is to understand the business problem first, here is a story from CIO Magazine where the project started with the technology.
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People have expressed plenty of paranoia about social network analysis techniques that exploit existing corporate data stores. So, it shouldn't be surprising to see reports of companies that are selling their tools to snoop on their employees.
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In TOC Application Expert training, we are talking about the goal of Viable Vision projects to achieve ongoing growth in companies.
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Note: Only the most recent 50 articles are listed. For more in this category, please search or look through the date archives.
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