Tag Archives: management

You have a vision of what you want your organization to be but you do not know how to make it happen. The problem may be lack of capital, or you are consumed with the “every day”, or your team is not stepping up. The challenge is to find your organization’s constraint to growth and then to relieve that constraint.

Sometimes the solution is right in front of you but you need a fresh perspective from an experienced hand to see it, just as did Professor Nash in this scene from A Beautiful Mind:

Digital rights provided by moviecomm.com. — Click to see a two-minute clip from A Beautiful Mind that shows how even hard problems can sometimes be simply solved with a fresh perspective.

An organization is a system of systems: the system of doing what it does (DO), the system of creating demand for what it does (SELL), and the system to get big (GROW). Odds are that one of these three systems holds your organization back from achieving its potential to perform and grow. Which system constrains your organization?

IntelliVen can help. We work best with organizations who sell products or services into the enterprise and government markets. You should be bigger than a startup and a small fraction of the size you will be when you get to the goal you are after.

Contact intelliven@intelliven.com to discuss, the first hour on our dime, your vision and challenges.

Never do what you are told!

April 21, 2015 Peter DiGiammarino Leave a comment

I tell everyone who works with, or for, me that they are never to do something because I told them to do it. I do not want or expect anyone to do what I ask just because I told them to do it. Instead, I insist they do what they do because they understand what they are doing, they know why it makes sense to do it, they believe that what they are about to do is the wise and right thing to do, and they want to do it.

The objective is to make them (as opposed to me!) accountable for what they do and to help them grow through the experience. Soon I will not have to ask them any more because what I want done will be internalized and we can move on the next stage of growth. If I ever ask them to do something that they do not understand, agree with, or want to do then I beg them to tell me about it so that we can talk it through.

An approach that demands people to do something but that does not take time to be sure those being told understand and agree with doing it may seem more like what a CEO should do but it is not. Here is why:

When things do not go quite right it is too easy for the person to let themselves off-the-hook as they say, either out loud or to themselves, that: “I only did it because the boss told me to.”

It is human tendency to do what you are told to do by persons in positions of authority. However, when you follow an order, you do not necessarily have to:

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Do & Review

How to reduce risks on important projects.

March 30, 2015 Peter DiGiammarino Leave a comment

Background on Managing Risk on Important Projects

In the context of any strategic initiative involving a significant evolution in systems, process, or organization, risk is the chance that the effort will be less than a complete success … that it will be late, over budget, perform unacceptably when completed, fail to realize the expected business benefits, or even never be completed.

There are so many factors that can contribute to a less-than-successful project. How is a project manager to decide which to focus on and how to address them?

Approach

Milt Hess, in his paper Reducing Risk on Projects, presents a strategy for deciding which risk factors deserve attention and for integrating risk reduction into the project holistically instead of treating it as a separate activity. This strategy turns the traditional approach to risk management on its head. Instead of thinking about all the things that can wrong, it focuses on what has to go right.

The strategy requires that a project first establish a clear definition of success – its success targets. The paper describes concrete steps that the project can take to increase the likelihood of meeting the targets and the questions that senior management and sponsors should ask to ensure that the project stays on track.

Here are a few of the key elements of the approach:

Periodically develop a forecast of the expected outcomes for the success targets. If the forecast for a target is ‘I don’t know’, the project is at risk. Include resources in the project plan to reduce uncertainty about the outcome.

Dependency on external events and agents introduces risk. Explicitly identify dependencies during the planning process, document assumptions, and monitor them regularly. Include resources in the project plan to reduce uncertainty about the dependencies.

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Get Aligned, Manage to Lead, People Matters

Why every organization needs its leader to try not to do anything.

November 12, 2014 Peter DiGiammarino Leave a comment

Every organization has, or needs, a leader. And it is true that the power of one committed, clever person can make all the difference in the world. But no one individual, even the greatest leader, does anything of much significance alone.

The simple truth is that it takes a team to lead an organization. The action motivated by this truth is for the leader to decide what kind of leader to be and then to attract, collect, and align his/her top team and collect followers.

The best leaders figure out that it is not all about them. It is about their organizations and the decision to either manage or lead is a false dichotomy. The one in charge needs to manage in order to lead and, indeed, can and should Manage to Lead his/her organization to achieve the stated vision. The top person’s job starts with managing his/her own self to lead. Continue reading Why every organization needs its leader to try not to do anything. →

Do & Review, Manage to Lead

How to get back on track when a project goes awry.

August 29, 2014 Peter DiGiammarino Leave a comment

When a project goes awry and no longer performing according to plan:

Follow the steps to handle a disgruntled client to manage communication with the client.

Assign a single capable person to serve as Project Manager (PM) responsible for the entire project through to completion if one is not already assigned or if the one assigned has proven ineffective. The PM should be someone who has previously been successful in similar circumstances in terms of project scope, scale, and complexity. If someone with requisite experience is not available to serve as PM then arrange for the experienced person to serve as a close adviser to the PM until a new plan is in place and performance relative to the new plan is on track.

Have the PM work with the client, the project team, management, and advisers to pull together a revised plan. Review the plan thoroughly with the PM, the project team, and with outside stakeholders, including the client, to be sure the path to completion, all the way through to client acceptance, is well formulated, understood, agreed to, and sensible.

Continue reading How to get back on track when a project goes awry. →

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