December 12th, 2007
Sometimes you get unexpected insights. My post “What’s Harder? Project Management or Management” elicited a wonderfully simple “boxes” analogy from Ren Garcia at Accounting Solver. In it he said:
“In a standard hierarchical corporate organization, you have specializations through boxes (i.e., departments, divisions, sections, etc) identifying finance, marketing, production, human resources, etc. Frequently, the specializations become […]
By Bob Turek -- 3 comments
December 11th, 2007
Fascinating conversation with an executive of an agile software development firm about transformation projects as they compare to lean manufacturing initiatives. Lean transformations have settled into starting with training heavily laced with practical activities. The reason that this is so important is that the approach is NOT intuitive.
Lean requires a person to experience how the concepts can […]
By Bob Turek -- 0 comments
December 10th, 2007
A recent September 2007 Gartner study titled “Building Agile Manufacturing That Enables Transformation” made several great points:
1. Changing forces in market, customer expectations and technology demand more agility and quickness in business processes.
2. Using a ”myths” leading to “misses” discussion they challenge people to look outside their environment for innovations saying that people and companies tend to “lock […]
By Bob Turek -- 0 comments
December 9th, 2007
Excellent “Strategy+Business” article (free registration required) on “See For Yourself” advice for executives wanting to short circuit innovation cycles; it is a great history on lean/”go and see” origins of Toyota, Wal-Mart and others who have adopted these techniques. The idea of short-circuiting the cycles created by the barriers of multi-level organizations, approval and budgeting processes exists […]
By Bob Turek -- 2 comments
December 8th, 2007
Rueben Slone, Executive VP of Supply Chain for Office Max looks outside his company for innovations. His quote in APICS magazine’s article (sorry, membership required), “Career Essentials: Adept Supply Chain Professionals Help Companies Thrive” caught my attention:
“The difference between a groove and a grave is only the depth.”
He’s speaking about comfort levels and the ability […]
By Bob Turek -- 2 comments
December 7th, 2007
I had one of those “you’re messing up” conversations with a person who I have given permission to tell me such things. Miki, who writes Leadership Turn, said that my PMO emphasis seems forced and only for a big company audience. I agreed. The “Office” in PMO seems to conjure up a large group of […]
By Bob Turek -- 22 comments
December 6th, 2007
The “Choosing the Right PMO Vision” series (20 posts I did in November 2007) is a step-by-step approach for executives to consider a few PMO models to implement. They run the gamut from low-value “repository” type models to high-value PMOs that can increase strategy execution from 10% to 90%. Wouldn’t that be nice!
For those of […]
By Bob Turek -- 0 comments
December 5th, 2007
My feeling is that both have their difficulties and a lot depends on the type of person you are. I prefer project management because it offers more variety and interesting management challenges generally having to do with getting temporary teams to perform well. These same preferences would probably be viewed as negatives by others who […]
By Bob Turek -- 10 comments
December 4th, 2007
In November 2007 I did 20 posts on how to go about choosing the right PMO vision for your company. It is a step by step approach that starts with a few posts on how to agree on the problem to be solved. Thereafter, PMO models were considered based on value based criteria. The series […]
By Bob Turek -- 4 comments
December 3rd, 2007
An article in “Business Week” on improving board performance discussed the case of an oil and gas company Board of Directors that complained about the preparation material they received from the CEO. They didn’t like it’s detailed nature and that it focused on the financial considerations of a project. The CEO responded by simply asking […]
By Bob Turek -- 0 comments
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