So much time and attention has been given to the work from home and work from anywhere discussion that the real point has been ignored. The issue or goal is not where one works, from home, at office or from anywhere. The desire is and always should be results or outcomes. The discussion should be…
Category: Alignment
Content is King
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Amazon halted Kindle sales of all books published by Macmillan in a dispute over higher e-book prices. As a commentary on the significance of this move, consumers and businesses must be aware that when dealing with proprietary formats and their related devices (i.e. Kindles or iPads), a strategic…
Remember Requirements First
Someone I know recently purchased an Amazon Kindle eBook reader. It is a great device after all in all respects. Then came a snag – she tried to purchase a J.K. Rowling story and found out that the author’s work was not available for the Kindle. She was incredulous. I was also surprised, not by…
Entrepreneurship versus Bureaucracy
Unencumbered by facts, it’s easy to say that when I have freedom to operate in any and all directions, it’s entrepreneurial – when I have to follow any rules it’s bureaucratic. The two words, entrepreneurial and bureaucratic have become two of my favorite sound bites lately. A great push back to attempting to put a…
Why are our definitions of “done” different?
This is certainly a critical question to ask yourself – and the positive approach to this is “Let’s make sure we all have the same definition for being done”. This is a variation on the theme of success criteria and what does success look like, but really gets more to the heart of each and…
Death by 1,000 Sound Bites
I just can’t leave well enough alone, but I have seen a large number of projects derailed by a cascade of sound bites. This post, a follow-on to the post on facts versus sound bites stresses the importance of issue management, (hit list, hot list, top 10) to insure that focus is continually placed where…
Information Overload or Bandwidth Battle?
It’s true, we do get bombarded incessently with information; and marketers have for a long time understood the need for their messages, their information, to stand out. How, in a business environment, do we insure that the business message, the business objectives, are what stand out when the boundaries between the business day and the…
Lack of Organizational Clarity is a Killer
Not too many things slow down progress more than a lack of organizational clarity with regards to responsibility and authority. I’m not sure if having more than one person responsible for something is much better than having no one responsible for something. What I am certain of is that if it is clear who is…
Underspending your budget… not necessarily a good thing
Budget conversations are not relevant unless they are in a context of value delivery. I have often been drawn into conversations where constituents are beaming happily that they are consistently under budget – the only logical followup question is: did you accomplish your project objectives relative to financial and calendar commitments. If not, underspending a…
Fuzzy Objectives yield Fuzzy Results
No matter how many resources may be involved in “delivering the goods”, things are usually much better if you have a very good definition of what you are trying to accomplish. A large challenge with complex initiatives in business today, is that a numerous decisions must be made all the time to make forward progress….