5 things that happen when you really know your strategy

Wow---what a succinct way to know you (and those you lead "get your strategy").  This post is from an interesting group Anectdote in Australia, focused on the power of storytelling in organizations. Wonderful diagram of their work is below.  Worth a look and they offer a very useful newsletter!

Here are five things that happen when you really do know your strategy:

1. you know when to say 'no.'
2. you get better support from your colleagues--they are trying to achieve the same things
3. you can wing it with confidence--the strategy is your safety net
4. you can focus on doing the right things rather than just doing things right
5. you can act with more autonomy because you know where others are going, and autonomy is motivating

Learning from High Performance Labs

McKinsey's recent study on how the best labs manage talent provides very useful insights for leaders of complex projects and programs. They studied 4,500 researchers in 260 laboratories in academia and research-based industries, including automotive, basic materials, high tech, and pharmaceuticals.Findings were that talent management was critical for success. BUT look at the correlations of high performance with other factors, including effective portfolio and project management. If you lead new product or similar initiatives, this is worth your review.

You Don't Need a Project Team...You Need A Project Network

In the Spring issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review, "Why Project Networks Beat Project Teams", summarizes research supporting the cultivation of project networks.

Unlike a project team that relies only on the knowledge held by members or a personal network that individuals use to solve their individual problems, the project network combines the knowledge held by the members of a team with the problem-solving capabilities of the team members’ personal networks to achieve a project goal.

The integration of project team members’ knowledge with the capabilities from their personal networks is what differentiates a project network from other kinds of individual and team-based work. This summarizes key actions the research suggest bring value:

Leading Change from the Middle

 

Yesterday we completed the Spring session of our on-campus Stanford Advanced Project Management (SAPM) program with students from all over the world, Global Fortune 100 firms, and innovative non-profits. (Note--apply or register for the SAPM Summer session June 12-17 here.)  I had the privilege of working with Tim Wasserman, IPS Learning CLO, Shirzad Charmine of Coaches Training Institute, and Dr. Behnam Tabrizi, author of Rapid Transformation: A 90-Day Plan for Fast and Effective Change, in delivering Leading Change from the Middle. The book and Behnam's research served as one of the anchors for the course.

We had a fantastic, energetic, enthusiastic class with folks from around the world.  The class comraderie added to the vivid discussions we had around a variety of case studies as well as guest lecturer from HP.  One student, an Aussie working in Switzerland, even had her young baby and husband with her.

Some ideas and concepts from the course discussions include:

• Change yourself first, than help others
• Fast is better...always.
• Be willing to change...transformation requires agility and adaptability.
• Though working from the middle, top executive support is required.
• Purpose matters--principles first...then methodology.
• 90 days is not long, work fast, work smart

Failure is an option...fear is not! ...James Cameron

Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. 

Thank you Samuel Beckett.  Failures of all types are in the news and several fascinating perspectives on the power of failure...if you view it as an outcome and learn from it follow.

1-Director James Cameron  at TED

The director of the two highest grossing films in history--Avatar and Titanic-- ends this great TED Talk with "Failure is an option, fear is not."  He notes that failure has to be an option to innovate.  Watch it and learn!

2-April Edition of the Harvard Business Review--the Failure Issue.

This issue provides a wonderful array of articles and learnings around failure.  The introduction sums up the issue:

Failure. We’re hypocrites about it. Go online, and you’ll find scores of pleasant aphorisms celebrating the inevitability of failure and the importance of learning from it. But in real life—and in real companies—failure is anathema. We’re afraid of it. We avoid it. We penalize it.

It’s time for managers to get past platitudes and confront the F-word taboo. In this special issue every article provides some home truths about good failures (when we expect to fail and learn something), bad failures (when we’re sabotaged by errors in judgment), or unavoidable failures (when complex systems break down). Failure is inevitable and often out of our control. But we can choose to understand it, to learn from it, and to recover from it.

3-Learning from IDEO
In our Stanford program, we use many examples from IDEO, the Palo Alto, CA, US, design consultancy. Tim Brown, IDEO CEO,  reminds us of the power of learning from doing (a la fast prototyping) in this post from his excellent Design Thinking blog: .

...it is important it is to remind ourselves of the value of experimentation. My hypothesis is that organizations generally avoid experimentation when it comes to processes and management. In fact they positively hate it. One reason may be that it is scary to mess with people and processes and much harder to do than messing around with new technology or new products. That feels more like an excuse than a reason to me. I believe we lack processes for prototyping our ideas quickly when it comes to management. ...experiments too often turn into initiatives. Experiments are designed for learning and it is okay if they fail whereas initiatives are too important to fail. I came away thinking that initiatives are things to be avoided at least until you have learnt from some experiments.

Best of HBS Working Knowledge in 2009

Best of HBS Working Knowledge 2009 — HBS Working Knowledge. This is an excellent overview of top 10 articles and working papers from the Harvard Business Review.

TOP 10 ARTICLES OF 2009

1. Understanding Users of Social Networks
   Many business leaders are mystified about how to reach potential customers on social networks such as Facebook. HBS professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski provides a fresh look into the interpersonal dynamics of these sites and offers guidance for approaching these tantalizing markets.
2. Social Network Marketing: What Works?
   Purchase decisions are influenced differently in social networks than in the brick-and-mortar world, says Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta. The key: Marketers should tap into the networking aspect of sites such as Facebook.
3. Uncompromising Leadership in Tough Times
   As companies batten down the hatches, we need leaders who don't compromise on standards and values that are essential in flush times. Fortunately, such leaders do exist. Their insights can help other organizations weather the current crisis, says HBS professor emeritus Michael Beer. Q&A.
4. Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Teams
   The ability to lead teams is fast becoming a critical skill for all managers in the 21st century. Here are four HBS Working Knowledge stories from the archives that address everything from how teams learn to turning individual performers into team players. Questions asked include: How does a team leader win the confidence of the group? What's the best method for developing team goals? How can individual performers be developed into team players? How do teams learn?