Maslow’s Hammer, Digitized
Abraham Maslow is attributed with saying that “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. Most of us are guilty of falling prey to such thinking in our personal and professional lives at some points in time. However, I think this mode of thinking also affects organizations. Individuals and organizations attempting to remain relevant and thrive in the digital age should resist the temptation to focus too much effort on transforming their existing skills, products and...
Read MoreTo Fail or Not to Fail?
I’m torn between the essence of two ideas I find very appealing, but seemingly at odds with one another. The first is based on achieving progress using a “fail fast, fail forward” approach and the second involves achieving excellence by “minimizing mistakes”. The former is more of a philosophy for growth or innovation I suppose. Try new things, learn as quickly as you can, and understand that there is as much (or more) to be learned in what we mess up as there is...
Read More7 Speeds of Fast
I once read that John “Pieface” McKenzie, a Boston Bruin in the Bobby Orr era, described Orr as having “7 speeds of Fast”. I don’t have the actual quote but I recall the context of his comment being that he was skating up the ice one game, thinking he was going pretty fast, when Bobby glided past him, going much faster, but appearing to be barely exerting himself. The world we live in almost always puts a premium on speed. Business wants to bring products to market...
Read MoreProject Strategies and the Importance of Being Able to Think Critically
In commercial and public organizations, it is typically the responsibility of senior management to set and communicate the high level direction of the organization. This direction should be a succinct summary of what the organization is all about and is often equated to being the vision and/or purpose of the company. I believe this directional element of an organization should answer the question of why the organization exists and what it produces. Apple Computer’s vision / purpose...
Read MoreCollaboration and Enterprise IT
In a keynote speech earlier this year at a Big Data conference in California, Geoffrey Moore talk about how the consumerisation of IT will affect the enterprise. Here are some of this thoughts and implications from my perspective. He suggested that since the 1970’s, enterprise IT has focused on building / deploying large systems of record. These would be the admin systems, billing systems, finance and HR systems with the requisite building blocks like database management systems...
Read MoreThinking Strategically as a PM
I once managed a project that involved launching a new product for a financial services company. The initial few weeks of the project were very chaotic. Product development had not fully defined the specs of the product they wanted to launch which prevented the administration area from fully understanding what it would take to do their jobs once the product was launched. IT needed requirements from both sides before it could provide a meaningful contribution but the product development folks...
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