Organizational Decision Making

I’ve spent a lot of time making and thinking about decisions within organizations.  One thing I’ve noticed is that the best decisions are those that are the best informed (obviously).  However, collecting and analyzing enough data to make the “best” decision can be a significant investment.  This typically results in leaders collecting some data and … Continue reading Organizational Decision Making

Scaling Up

Just picked up the new business framework book Scaling Up written by Verne Harnish over at Gazelles. It's a great book! The book breaks the challenges down into four areas. People, strategy, execution, cash. Very straightforward and includes concrete behaviors and practical examples. Verne and the team also give you plenty of room to experiment … Continue reading Scaling Up

Intrinsic Motivation – Drive

I talk quite a bit about the concept of intrinsic motivation in my presentations and workshops. Intrinsic motivation describes our satisfaction in doing something simply for the sake of doing it.  Think of playing an instrument, solving a puzzle or painting a picture.  The activity is a reward in itself.  Daniel Pink’s “Drive” is great … Continue reading Intrinsic Motivation – Drive

Analyze your Value Stream, A Quick How To Guide

Inspired by Michael Dubakov's article Flow. Discover Problems and Waste in Kanban, I thought I’d spend some time looking at Value Stream Analysis. We talk a lot these days about delivering value to our clients, but many of us don’t understand the details of how that is accomplished.  Sure we understand that raw ones and … Continue reading Analyze your Value Stream, A Quick How To Guide

Company Growth

I have founded or co-founded a number of startups, worked as a consultant for Fortune 100 companies, and been an executive in large corporations.  What I’ve come to hold true is that as a company grows it experiences what Dr. Larry E. Greiner calls “growth phases.”  Dr. Greiner postulated the existence of these phases in … Continue reading Company Growth

The Dollar Value of SaaS Features

I had a discussion with a colleague yesterday on how to determine the priority of features on a given service. We quickly arrived at the topic of assessing business need, i.e. value, of the features. This is a conversation I've had many times, with many clients and thought it might be worthwhile to document some … Continue reading The Dollar Value of SaaS Features