What Would Google Do?
What Would Google Do? was written by Jeff Jarvis, founder of the popular buzzmachine.com blog. I liked this book but didn’t love it. I’d give it a 7 out of 10. My main complaint is that I found about only a quarter of it useful. The rest seemed a bit fluffy and written mostly to create enough content to make it a book. The author himself says he is somewhat breaking his own rule by making this into a book when he claims mainstream publishing is dying and irrelevant. Having said...
Read MoreImplied Requirements
Assume you are working on a project for an organization that is launching a new product. The product is similar to an existing group of products the organization already sells. This could be a sporting goods manufacturer that is launching a new line of hockey sticks, a packaged goods company that is adding a new line of cleaning products to its existing stable of cleaning products or a bank offering a new savings account product to their line of existing savings accounts. Assume also that...
Read MoreThe Opposable Mind
The Opposable Mind was written by Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at York University. The book’s premise is that small minority of business leaders think in a very unique manner compared to their peers and this manner of thinking is what Martin coins Integrative Thinking. These leaders, when confronted with a problem, are unlikely to settle for a solution that requires trade-offs when compared to the other available solutions. He likens this approach to choosing...
Read MoreProject Charter Observations
In my experience, organizations create charters in two distinctly different ways. Some use the charter as one of the first documents created in the project life cycle. For these organizations, the charter is a stake in the ground to give all stakeholders identified to that point some insight into the key high level attributes of the project. It tends to be a brief document because often there is still a large list of unknowns about the project. Other organizations like to create a much...
Read MoreLife Entrepreneurs
I’ve recently finished reading Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives. The premise of the book is that to be a successful entrepreneur without sacrificing other aspects of your life (ie. family life, hobbies, etc.), you need to blend the two together rather than trying to find a balance. A couple of tidbits I really like from the book were the reference to Martin Seligman’s Authentic Happiness where his research shows that happiness comes from three...
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