I see a lot of projects within business support organizations that look like "implement this tool." And then the organization is surprised when the project takes much longer than expected and the tool doesn't get used to the extent expected.
All in business
I see a lot of projects within business support organizations that look like "implement this tool." And then the organization is surprised when the project takes much longer than expected and the tool doesn't get used to the extent expected.
"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there." L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953.
"One-time events create change like dieting only on your birthday and expecting to lose weight."
More on time management and multitasking. It's a topic near and dear to what I've been doing for many years.
An interesting talk from AI researcher Kenneth Stanley on his counter-intuitive discovery/realization that formal goals/objectives can block creativity.
Stephen Bungay's "The Art of Action" brings together ideas around how people and organizations should be led, based on the study of Carl von Clausewitz and other military thinkers around how they deal with the fact of life: we can't know everything before we must act.
Is the goal of a for-profit company to "make more money, now and in the future"? I suppose it depends on how you define the terms.
Freek Vermeulen's "Business Exposed" is a great read that debunk a lot of common practice and common beliefs within business. He brings in a variety of business research to back up his sometimes surprising observations.
Jason Jennings' book Less is More: The main idea: focus. Focus on one thing - one thing for the long term, not one thing this quarter. And that one thing is the big idea of the organization - why is the organization on the planet? That big idea sets the direction and the yardstick by which everything is measured.
A great discussion of systems thinking by Fred Kofman, which ties into much of what the folks in the Theory of Constraints camp talk about. In the first minute, he says several times some version of, "To optimize the overall system, you must sub-optimize the subsystems."
I read the 20-year-old Raving Fans recently. It has some great ideas that help people think about how to grow and develop your business. The key is to turn your customers into raving fans.
Are successes because of the design or despite the design? What about failures?
Why do businesses exist? What is their purpose? Can we identify just one thing? Steve Denning talks about Milton Friedman's statement that the sole purpose of corporations is to make money for its shareholders. The short form is that Friedman based his article on flawed logic.
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.
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.
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.