Tradition: Does it Work for Business?
My blog management at b5media runs promotions every once in awhile. The latest is “traditions”; obviously designed to associate with the Thanksgiving holiday tradition and all the things we do to make it a successful event. The word tradition caused me to think about how Vince Lombardi said that the team that blocks and tackles the best- i.e., does the fundamentals- will win.
What I tend to write about is innovation since I’m all about technology enablement of business processes to enable new ways of doing things. Such change requires projects. Tradition in business can be justified- but, just like any business process or way of doing things, it has to work and be valuable.
In fact, questioning the value of processes should be a “tradition” that causes and justifies innovative change to remain competitive. The blocking and tackling that works today may not work tomorrow. A highly changing, continuous improvement culture has been proven to work well for many businesses. Interestingly, continuous improvement requires a stable, viable, “traditional” entity to process the change, the projects, the execution of the strategies behind the projects, and research to support innovation. That stable, viable “traditional” entity comes in the form of a Project Management Office (PMO).
A PMO traditionally seems to be a “big company” requirement- but I’ve got a feeling that small and medium sized companies require, and have used, the same approach albeit in a different form. Let me know what examples you have of this traditional PMO-like entity or process, what you call it, and how it works for your company.
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POSTED IN: PMOs and Portfolio Management
2 opinions for Tradition: Does it Work for Business?
Miki
Nov 16, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Bob, I, too, love Lombardi. He has better bytes than most gurus around today. I know that his sales training film was the best I ever saw and that was years ago.
I’m not a great lover of tradition in business because I find that too often it translates to “Because we’ve always done it that way.” You’re so right that what works today likely won’t work tomorrow, let alone next week or next year, whereas making questioning the value of processes a tradition is brilliant.
Heh heh, great minds must run in the same channel (I know they write in it:) because my traditions post revolves around the same theme—I’m just not organized enough to get it up before Monday.
Bob
Nov 16, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Miki- Lombardi was the ultimate “doer” wasn’t he- isn’t that something that you write about? BTW- I think “brilliant” applies to something you believe in your core- which is how I feel about id’ing value of processes. Traditions is an amazing topic.
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