business category archives
Context matters. I've said this for years. And now, Sam Sommers has a new book out that says the same thing. Plus a video introduction.
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Interesting set of executive "habits" associated with failures from Sydney Finkelstein - originally published eight years ago. I like the "lack of respect" early warning sign.
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James Slavet has an interesting set of "Five New Management Metrics You Need To Know" on the Forbes technology blog. Rather than look specifically at throughput, he suggests some internal metrics that might be leading indicators.
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Follow the cash. Other accounting practices don't help with decision-making.
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Another take on defining problems the right way, motivated by a David Allen newsletter article.
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A Goldratt discussion on TOC for startups reminds me of the importance of subordination and synchronization.
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A great paper from 1988 by Jonathan Grudin reminds us to pay attention to all the points of view when brining new technologies to bear in an organization.
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Some thoughts about Systems Thinking resources from my perspective from Theory of Constraints and other experiences.
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New tools and technology are fun and all, but once you get beyond the experimenting stage, please decide how you are going to use that shiny new tool to do the things you need to do.
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Engaged employees are happy employees. Happy employees lead to their advocating for you in the wider world. Go for it!
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Following on the heels of my previous post, I have just listened to a couple podcasts that feature a similar idea: HBR Ideacast and Manager Tools.
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There are a number of ideas floating around out there that suggest management are one of the biggest areas for improvement in business. Here are a couple examples and some thoughts on why this is and how to start solving. There is much more to do than what I've written here, but I think this is a start.
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I was asked today, "If you were to blog about this, what would you say?" Interesting observation that I tend to be more eloquent on my blog than I was on the phone. Of course, I usually don't write so directly about what is happening between my ears.
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I came across this short piece by Joy Goltz in the NY Times, Why Cash Is NOT King. And I couldn't help think of the connection to one of the core tenets of Theory of Constraints thinking and consulting practice.
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This may be familiar to those who are familiar with SPIN Selling or related concepts, but I see it showing up over and over again. Sellers (taken broadly) focus on features and techniques, and then they are disappointed / upset that customers don't find these things interesting. Or worse, customers reject the effort entirely.
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I've talked about complexity vs. complicated and simplicity before. It all depends on your point of view, and this Eric Berlow TED talk (3 minutes) highlights that beautifully. If you can take a different view on your situation, you can often take something that seems overwhelming and home in on the areas that can really influence the question at hand.
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I read SPIN Selling for the first time and enjoyed it. SPIN is about asking questions to understand the Situation, Problem, Implications, and Needs-Payoff of your customers / clients. It's about creating buy-in by connecting to explicit needs of and benefits to the customer.
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Kevin C Desouza has a nice categorization of management consultant roles in "What kind of a management consultant are you?." I fit his category as a doctor.
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I stumbled upon this story from the University of Texas' McCombs School of Business, describing a class that took an interesting set of field trips along a supply chain from Austin, TX to China.
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The Boy Scout motto is "Be Prepared." This idea shows up again and again in life and business. For some reason, I pick up on it right away when I am reading something new or hearing new ideas about how to organize or plan or get something done. It's usually in the form of "to succeed at _____, you must be prepared."
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Tim Kastelle has a nice piece on "The Problem with Metrics." There is a lot to the story of metrics and measures, but the key is to measure the right things. And more importantly, stop measuring the wrong things - those measures will drive the wrong behaviors.
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One of the fun things about knowledge work is that it is flexible and often there are many ways to solve a problem. But one of the key things that you need to know is where you want to be when you are done.
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A couple of podcasts on giving feedback provided some common advice and some conflicting advice. Interesting. The key though: feedback is supposed to help change behavior.
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The recent American Management Association "Leader's Edge" newsletter contained an article by Rick Maurer on change management - or failures in change management, Why So Many Changes Fail-and What You Can Do About It. Given that I've been reading a bunch on the topic recently, the article struck me.
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Ram Charan gave the keynote talk at Project Flow 2010 today. His theme is related to his research and writing on the topic of Execution and driving performance in companies. His suggestion to the attendees was fairly simple: align yourself to the issues that the CEO faces, and you will be able to help both yourself and the company.
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My brief review of John Kotter's "The Heart of Change." Throughout the book, Kotter emphasizes two things - moreso than in Leading Change. One, leading change is all about changing people's behavior. And two, the path through all the stories is about "See, Feel, Change."
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Many people have passed around this hilarious video from a company talent show of an all-too-real spoof of a conference call, including the "bloop bloops" of people arriving (late) and a dog barking in the background and someone typing too aggressively. But how do you make these things better?
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John Kotter's Leading Change has been sitting on my should-read list for quite a while, particularly since my association with the MS-LOC program at Northwestern. It's also come up a number of times on a Theory of Constraints mailing list as a must read to get a better understanding of why change implementations get stuck and what to do about it.
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Thanks to Harold Jarche, we have a fun meme for people who are into social media. Let's counter those "10 top reasons to ban social media in the organization."
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I don't quite know how this happened, but I have just read another book on the tribal dynamics of organizations. This time it is Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright.
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Another book in my long backlog was Ray Immelman's "Great Boss Dead Boss." I finally picked up a copy and thoroughly enjoyed it. As with many good books, the ideas have me looking at the world in a slightly different way.
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Steve Denning has been stirring up the water with some interesting discussions in preparation for the release of his book on Radical Management. This one touches on why (KM) programs fail.
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I've had Brown and Duguid's The Social Life of Information on my reading list for a long time. I finally picked up a copy at the library, and I was happily surprised that it holds up well after ten years.
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So often in business operations, the focus is on removing variability or eliminating waste or load leveling. But how often do you hear about these projects and wonder whether it actually does anything for the bottom line. I could write about why that is, but what has tickled me today is the idea that variability and "waste" can actually be helpful.
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It's so easy to get caught up in measuring things and forget why you are measuring.
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My review of The Conductive Organization by Hubert Saint-Onge and Charles Armstrong.
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Jim Hassett of the Legal Business Development blog has a great set of posts on project management: What every lawyer needs to know about project management. He does a good job of addressing a lot of the topics and questions people might have as they start thinking about moving to a project management model.
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Everyone knows that PowerPoint is "evil." But simply having complicated graphics, does not mean the information presented is wrong. Just have a look at Tufte's oft-sited example of the
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Do you run a pilot? It all depends on the scale of the pilot. And on the network in which the pilot operates.
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John Hagel spoke this evening about his new book, The Power of Pull, at the Berkman Center. I took a boatload of notes and this is the result of that.
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I have said this before: many organizations have far more good ideas than they have the resources to execute those ideas. I was listening to a recent Harvard Business IdeaCast and my ears perked up when they started talking about multitasking.
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Mark McDonald on the Gartner blog network says that The nature of change is changing with a new pattern being related to much flatter organizations and wider information flow. He says that change is becoming social-driven, rather than process-driven. Interesting.
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James Robertson's "Knowledge managers: stuck in the shadow of immortal figures" has inspired some interesting discussion, both on his blog and in at least one email discussion list.
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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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