Thursday, April 1, 2010

Lead teams in India – read this book!



Today's Financial Times has useful review of this.


... innovative management practice from India's leading companies and what companies everywhere can learn from it. For much of the last century, the practice of management was dominated by Western, particularly U.S., models. Even economies emerging in the latter part of the century evolved toward the Western paradigm. But today, we see a distinct model of management developing in India and, so far, it has been remarkably successful. India's top companies are growing at staggering rates and doing so with an innovative and vibrant set of management practices - especially in strategy, leadership, governance, talent and organizational culture. Not bound to Western thinking or practice, Indian leaders are creating a new model for leading and running companies.
The India Way How India’s Top Business Leaders are Revolutionizing Management By Peter Cappelli, Harbir Singh, Jitendra Singh and Michael Useem
Harvard Business Press, $29.95



Friday, March 19, 2010

Culture Matters – compare Apple and Microsoft Design Guides for Phone Apps

Microsoft Immediately Stumbles in Quest for Well-Designed Phone Apps | Design & Innovation | Fast Company.

Culture and its impact on how an organization can best execute its strategy are a key element of our Stanford SAPM program. This article provides fascinating insights on how culture(How we do things here) affects design.
The newly released app-design guide reveals a lot more about Microsoft than they probably intended.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Dangerous Words...

IPS has a powerful platform for planning complex global programs, FastPLAN. Having conducted many of these, I worry whenever someone uses any of the following "Dangerous Words". They are dangerous because they are words we use and assume that others have the same understanding we do about them.

STOP: Whenever you hear these in your meetings and workshops...make sure everyone defines them in a common way.

Have words to add, leave us a comment.
Done, All, Never, Not, No, Yes, Support, System, Systems, Deliverable, Management, Project Manager, Program Manager, Product Manager, Project Leader, Core Team Leader, PMO, Project Office, Metrics, Horizontal, Lateral, Training, Vendor, Contractor, Consultant, Change Management, Never, Always, Sort of, Maybe, Okay, Behavior change, Services, Internal, "They", External, Communications, Sponsor, Stakeholder, Customer, Owner, Complete, Process, "That’s interesting", I get it (i.e. no need to repeat it), Requirements

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Project Zone Map: A Tale of Two Views

Thanks to Larry O'Brien at Knowing.net for this next project zone map from darkgreyindustries. Those working in new product development will immediately recognize your world. Our goal is finding the balance--all of the zones are needed for a world-class business.


Making better decisions

McKinsey Quarterly's March 2010 study on the case for behvaioral strategy for making strategic decisions notes:
...very few corporate strategists making important decisions consciously take into account the cognitive biases—systematic tendencies to deviate from rational calculations—revealed by behavioral economics. It’s easy to see why: unlike in fields such as finance and marketing, where executives can use psychology to make the most of the biases residing in others, in strategic decision making leaders need to recognize their own biases. So despite growing awareness of behavioral economics and numerous efforts by management writers, including ourselves, to make the case for its application, most executives have a justifiably difficult time knowing how to harness its power.
Suggestions for making better decisions, detailed in the article, include:

  • Decide which decisions warrant the effort
  • Identify the biases most likely to affect critical decisions 
  • Select practices and tools to counter the most relevant biases
  • Embed practices in formal processes
      Bob Sutton, part of the faculty of the Stanford Advanced Project Management program), has many insightful posts about this. See Intution vs Data-driven Decision-making: Some Rough Ideas

      Saturday, February 20, 2010

      YouTube – Imagine Leadership | By XPLANE & Nitin Nohria

      YouTube - Imagine Leadership | By XPLANE & Nitin Nohria.

      Nitin Nohria and Amanda Pepper of Harvard Business School's Leadership Initiative collaborated with XPLANE to create this video in order to generate a discussion of the value and importance of leadership to address critical problems--useful for program leaders and leaders of leaders.

      Tuesday, February 9, 2010

      IT-Driven Innovation – MIT Sloan Management Review

      IT-Driven Innovation - Special Report - MIT Sloan Management Review.



      If you lead project-based work in IT this is an excellent set of resources for looking at IT and innovation. Notice the variety of ways that IT enables the exceution of an organization's strategy. Enjoy and grow!