July 13th, 2008
Not only are the stars aligned, but public opinion, politicians, and the National Association of Manufacturers are in agreement, that nuclear needs to considered again. Manufacturing Business Technology (MBT) writes that the logic is inescapable: it is a reliable source of power that will create thousands of high paying jobs. We’ve shied away from nuclear because of the poor examples of Russian plants without cooling towers. Top scientists have been befuddled by public disdain for nuclear because it IS safe.
Speak up and support nuclear energy. Make it your personal project and seek to understand how supporting it relates to the strategies of improving the economy and your personal financial future.
How do you feel about nuclear power? Is it safe? Why wouldn’t you support it?
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Tags: energy, Manufacturing-Business-Technology, National Association of Manufacturers, nuclear, nuclear projects, project-management, projects, public opinionShare This
By Bob Turek -- 4 comments
July 12th, 2008
More evidence of governmental bungling and great example of poor governance and poor project management. George Runner, my California Senator, writes in his weekly Report:
….raise taxes, meddle with the free market and impose more onerous regulations on businesses. Assembly Bill 2716 essentially does all of the above. The bill, which passed the Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee yesterday on a 3-2 party line vote, would demand that all employers provide paid sick leave to every employee – in spite of the employer’s ability to pay and regardless of whether the employee works full or part time….
Like a mandated tax, AB 2716 would cost employers $4.6 billion in the first five years if it were to pass, according to a study by the National Federation of Independent Business Research Foundation.
The study also shows 370,000 California jobs would be lost within five years of AB 2716’s enactment….But this bill goes beyond being a job killer; it’s a cold-blooded economy killer. It would cost California companies an estimated $59.3 billion in sales in the first five years of enactment according to the same study….
As this bill moves through the Legislature, my colleagues need to understand the level of damage these types of mandates inflict on the engine of California’s economy.
They need to understand that when small businesses get hit with cost increases, they cannot automatically increase prices to make up the difference.
Note that this ridiculous bill has no rationale except to get more money for the government- it is clearly a tax without reason. Then you have to ask: how will the money be spent. There is absolutely no link to a specific project or strategy. Basically a lot of money chasing projects yet undeclared with no strategy with no idea how the money will be spent. The professionally done report revealing the negative repercussions of this bill doesn’t seem to phase anybody. Voters! read and weep- then act.
Does your state government operate like this? What do you think is the root cause of such behavior? This type of action violates every tenet of good project management and governance? Do you agree or disagree?
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By Bob Turek -- 0 comments
July 11th, 2008
Just read an article that Miki at www.leadershipturn.com pointed me to in her post on Sarbox Welcomes Carbox. Whether or not you agree with the level of intrusion of both Sarbox and Carbox (SOX laced carbon emissions reporting)- and I don’t- the article accurately sums up the benefactors of such overbearing and sometimes ridiculous (in the case of Carbox) legislation:
“Expect the fees for consultants and lawyers to follow the same path.”
It’s a sad state of affairs when government intrusion is based on public whim and consultants and lawyers interests. In almost every case, the level of intrusion is proven to be overbearing AND a taxation scheme- whether it be in the form of direct taxes, fees, or penalties- is used to collect money for an alternative purpose.
What do YOU think? How do we control an overbearing government driven by a whipped up public opinion? Where have the leaders gone?
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By Bob Turek -- 5 comments
July 10th, 2008
Continual improvement can be defined in many ways. My new category now groups those posts for you. Here’s my list of the new entrants.
Continual improvement can be applied to many areas that are extremely valuable to a company:
With an eye toward protecting against quality “drift”:
http://www.projectmanagement411.com/efficiency-might-be-an-enemy-to-quality/
To your personal and project management:
http://www.projectmanagement411.com/calendaring-and-preparation-fight-bad-multi-tasking-on-projects/
To governance processes:
http://www.projectmanagement411.com/continual-improvement-projects-require-excellent-governance/
To balancing action with preparation:
http://www.projectmanagement411.com/new-beginnings-require-preparation-preparation-and-more-preparation/
To elimination of projects:
http://www.projectmanagement411.com/how-to-eliminate-it-projects/
and finally….to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approaches:
http://www.projectmanagement411.com/soa-as-a-continual-improvement-initiative/
The continually expanding areas that continual improvement can apply to are achieving high impact business process innovation especially when you leave the manufacturing floor (where it all started with Toyota).
Let me know if your definition of continual improvement has been expanded. What other areas have you applied these principles?
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By Bob Turek -- 0 comments
July 9th, 2008
Very interesting issue popped up the other day as I was speaking with a food manufacturer. They are very high quality and taste is everything. They therefore cringe when talk of continual improvement comes along because they do NOT want to mess with the process of food preparation even though they are a manufacturer and not a restaurant. Efficiency, as it relates to continual improvement, can lead to what they call recipe “drift”. In other words, many companies have started small with taste and quality of their food as the key differentiator, only to inexplicably lose that taste edge as they became “efficient” in their manufacturing. This is a great example because everyone understands what happens when your mom’s great recipe is passed onto the next generation the first time.
This got me thinking about other manufacturing processes, of very high quality, that might be subject to inexplicable “drift”. Over-engineering is generally a problem of not listening to the customer. The other thought is to concentrate on waste and NOT efficiency. Waste seems to be a more palatable target for the firm that is hesitant to embrace the efficiency side of continual improvement. The other approach might be to simply separate what you apply continual improvement approaches to. In the case of a food manufacturer maybe packaging, distribution and planning processes could be targets for waste reduction. Always remembering what your customer must have to continue to do business with you reigns supreme.
Do you have a high quality manufacturing process that could be subject to “drift”? Does focusing on waste and not on efficiency help combat “drift”? Is it possible to introduce continual improvement into an organization in one area and not another?
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Tags: continual improvement, efficiency, food industry, food preparation, lean, processes, project-management, projects, wasteShare This
By Bob Turek -- 0 comments
July 8th, 2008
I love to hear from consultants with practical experience. Consultants, who know what they are doing, are great because they are truly knowledge brokers. By this I mean they have many experiences with many industries and thereby can assist in innovation. They have plenty of practical suggestions on how to innovate; the problem is usually the resistance of the organization due to their culture. Watch for companies who are fantastic innovators when it comes to products but do not innovate their business processes!
Eric Brown is one of those knowledge brokers who has been commenting for awhile - thanks Eric! His latest is a quick but impactful thought on my “duh!” post on McKinsey Quarterly’s revelation that you have to choose the RIGHT projects to succeed:
ERIC: Absolutely right Bob. Choosing the right project is key…but many organizations don’t know how to do that. Plus..they spend millions with companies like McKinsey to find out that they don’t know how to pick the right projects :)
PM411: ….and they do not have to spend millions with McKinsey types. The reticence that companies have in attacking how to set up governance/PMO models to solve this problem is very interesting. I think it stems largely from hesitance to introduce another layer or structure into the organization; it must be done correctly in order to avoid a backlash and failure. I’m not saying it’s easy. But think of the opportunities!
This isn’t rocket science- but it is organizational science. How do you need to change your culture and organization to be able to innovate? I believe that innovation is directly associated with strong governance/PMO models- what do you think? Do you use take advantage of the knowledge brokering role of outside consultants to spur innovation in your business processes?
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By Bob Turek -- 0 comments
July 7th, 2008
Becky at www.myorgnanizedbiz.com recently wrote about the value of calendaring your “biz” and your life. One thing that stuck out was her proposal to try a two week experiment that could change your life:
Becky: Try this for the next two weeks: each day, figure out the five most important things that you need to accomplish that day. Then schedule time for them on your calendar. Schedule it around meetings and e-mail and errands. Actually block out time where you concentrate on that task.
And when that time comes, work on the task. If you only have a 1/2 hour, then see how much you can get done in a 1/2 hour. Don’t answer e-mail. Don’t pick up the phone. Just stick to your calendar.
Didn’t get your task done in the allotted time? That’s okay. Did you make progress? That’s the important part.
My response to her post was to link this thinking to project management best practices, preparation, and actually doing more by doing less:
PM411: Becky- really like the “capacity planning” emphasis. Many are great at calendaring but end up going from one activity to the next being unprepared. I find that lack of preparation means a lot of what I call “stops, starts and redos” which waste a lot of time. We almost need to do less in a better way to cut down the bad multi-tasking- this is what I love to write about at http://www.projectmanagement411.com, i.e., the ways good project management practices enable efficient prioritization of projects and alignment with strategies- whether it be on a personal or business level.
How about you? Do you have examples of doing more by doing less? The Theory of Constraints (Goldratt) deals with issues like suboptimization, slowing down certain activities to actually get more done because of the alignment with rates of other processes- do you see an application for this in your office? Your Plant? Your personal life?
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Tags: continual improvement, efficiency, food industry, food preparation, lean, processes, project-management, projects, wasteShare This
By Bob Turek -- 8 comments
July 6th, 2008
An older post on what governance boards want is garnering some attention this month. In it is a great example of a CEO dealing with HIS upper management: the board. It turns out that they didn’t want his detail financial analysis until they saw how a proposed acquisition linked with corporate strategy. Projects must be linked to strategy or they shouldn’t be projects!
I’ve been doing a research project on how continual improvement programs are embraced and drive companies from the executive and cultural perspectives. Interestingly, the best practice that seems to be emerging is excellent project prioritization based on alignment with strategies first, followed by value measures. One company tried several times to start continual improvement programs; it didn’t happen until the CEO and others embraced the program as strategic and then followed through with organizational changes such as placing a high level executive in charge of continual improvement programs.
What is your experience with continual improvement? Do you see how high level governance processes can be continually improved and be important to a continual improvement program? Can a continual improvement program exist without the excellent governance processes? I think not- but WHAT DO YOU THINK?
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Tags: collaborative innovation, governance-board, innovation, intellectual property, PMO, social networking, software, strategyShare This
By Bob Turek -- 1 comment
July 5th, 2008
Alan Wilensky’s comments on projectmanagement411.com are full of reality and, because he is a “tell it like it is” consultant, right to the point. His comment related to my June summary post (more specifically the “business epiphany: I wouldn’t have hired you” write up) bears repeating:
Alan: I always offer a 2 step contract in two billable partitions. The first is analysis, the second I implement the gory and unpleasant defunking.
Sometimes, the management I’m dealing with has to ‘cross the chasm’ after reading my analysis, and come to terms with the mess they have created, aided and abetted by some, frankly, unscrupulous IT vendors. Here’s a slice of life:
CIO: “We acknowledge and have read your analysis, and while it’s on the nose, I don’t see how we can take a wholesale alternate route at this point and terminate several of these programs. The investment is too great”.
ME: These people are screwing you, the end is nowhere in sight, and you are not even sure if you get to operational status, if any benchmarks will be met. There was no comparative cases or vendor cook-offs to see how these systems might compete. You let an IT enterprise sales team steer the project and nibble you to death on costs. It is time to step up and get a handle on this - if not with me, then YOU do it by starting now, pull the damn plug on this juggernaut.
I will always be available if you need guidance”
Silence
Silence
CIO: “Holy Moses……he’s right. This should have been stopped months and 300k ago.”
I am still waiting for the second call to initiate the re-engineering. I have high hopes, as they did not throw me out by my collar, and they paid me for my analysis.
PM411: Nothing like the truth to set you free. I guess you’re free- we’ll see if the client achieves this. I love the example- my experience is a bit different having been on the vendor side for most of my career. Since we already have many clients with our ERP system, we try to find out what the strategies of the company are and then position our solutions to drive key business processes that support the strategy (collaborative design, optimizing production lines, asset management). Problem is we are typically at the CIO level and they either don’t know the strategies and/or are unwilling to allow us to introduce the strategy mapping process to executives. As you know, typically there are very poor governance/PMO processes so this type of activity is sorely needed but clearly not recognized as valuable by most CIOs. Funny in that the strategy mapping almost always happens after execs do a “corporate visit” and hear about what we can do. Then they are asking the CIO “why didn’t you tell me about this?” Thanks for the stories and the great style that you tell them in.
A “tell it like it is” consultant like Alan is exactly what some companies need. Sadly, the companies that most need this type of advice are usually the most unwilling. It’s kind of like being a drug addict, you’ve got to hit bottom before you can admit you need help.
Are you close to hitting bottom? Could a consultant like Alan help you?
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By Bob Turek -- 2 comments
July 4th, 2008
Just wanted to share some thoughts with you on the fourth- our country’s birthday. I’m extremely thankful for the country I live in. For those of you who aren’t, please take a trip to another country and understand what you have here. The key for me is complete freedom. As you have read here, freedom - economic, political and personal - is essential to keep this juggernaut going. Our ability to rise out of difficulties is based on it. Anything that erodes that freedom is the enemy of the United States. Keep that in mind as you celebrate, thank those who keep you free, and develop a deep appreciation for the country you live in.
I’d like to hear from those who believe as I do- OR those who don’t! Put your thoughts in a few words, from your heart.
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By Bob Turek -- 0 comments
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