PLAN YOUR MAJOR INTEGRATIONS-Tale of two upgrades

Today's Wall Street Journal has insightful article comparing two airlines experience with installing the same new software--read and learn.

How Two Airlines Switched to New Software - WSJ.com.

Few things in the airline business are more daunting than upgrading to a new reservations system. Do it well and customers are none the wiser; mess it up and a carrier risks losing customers and tarnishing its brand.

Discount carriers JetBlue Airways Corp. and WestJet Airlines Ltd. both switched reservations systems in the past few months. The differing outcomes are a reminder of how the implementation of new technology can be just as crucial as the technology itself.

Despite months of planning, when WestJet flipped the switch on its new system its Web site crashed repeatedly and its call center was overwhelmed. It took months to resolve all the issues. JetBlue, which later upgraded to the same software, smoothed its transition by building a backup Web site and hiring 500 temporary call-center workers....

Meetings Done Right–Great guide here!

McKinsey Quarterly provides an excellent set of tips to ensure decision-making meetings are done well with minimal bias. Read the full story here. Examples of tips include:

Make sure the right people are involved

• Ensure diversity.
• Invite contributions based on expertise, not rank..

Assign homework

• Make sure predecision due diligence is based on accurate, sufficient, and independent facts and on appropriate analytical techniques.
• Request alternatives and “out of the box” plans—for instance, by soliciting input from outsiders to the decision-making process.

Create the right atmosphere

• As the final decision maker, ask others to speak up (starting with the most junior person); show you can change your mind based on their input; strive to create a “peerlike” atmosphere.
• Encourage admissions of individual experiences and interests that create possible biases.

Manage the debate

• Before you get going, make sure everyone knows the meeting’s purpose (making a decision) and the criteria you will be using to make that decision.
• Take the pulse of the room: ask participants to write down their initial positions, use voting devices, or ask participants for their “balance sheets” of pros and cons.

Follow up

• Commit yourself to the decision. Debate should stop when the decision is made. Connect individually with initial dissenters and make sure implementation plans address their concerns to the extent possible.

Monitor pre–agreed upon criteria and milestones to correct your course or move on to backup plans.

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

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.

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

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