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
Category: Management
Many of us struggle with having a seemingly endless ToDo list. While prioritizing it can sometimes help, often writing the number 48 in front of an activity can just cause more frustration. Years ago I looked for ways to manage my list. I asked peers and mentors how they dealt with the things they had … Continue reading The Eisenhower Matrix
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
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
Betting on a greyhound race can be tons of fun. You find a cool sounding greyhound, check the stats, then lay down $20 to win. (or some other bet variation) We are ecstatic when our greyhound wins, collecting our money and touting the prowess of our keen eye for the stats. When we lose, we … Continue reading Corporate Greyhound Racing
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
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
In much the same way Michael Kunze coined the acronym LAMP, I propose the use of a new industry acronym for Agile. Scrum, Lean, Kanban & Kaizen. (SLKK, pronounced slick) I have successfully used this process which incorporates techniques from all of these areas and felt it needed a name. I also feel that it … Continue reading SLKK – A New Agile Toolset
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
I read Peter Senge's book The Fifth Discipline a number of years ago and loved it. I recently reread it and realized it is still as relevant today as it was then. (if not more so). While the five disciplines discussed in this book are extremely useful when managing teams, the one that always seems … Continue reading Systems Thinking, the Fifth Discipline