Effective Meetings: A Round Up
May 15th, 2012 // 7:13 am @ Tanmay // One Comment
I love SCRUM methodology because it focuses on making meetings effective. Focus is on decisions and actions. A quick stand-up meeting everyday to track progress. One of the biggest wastes in any organization are ineffective meetings. I have always believed that meetings (specially with the team) are a great forum to inspire action, instill a [...]
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Training: The Change Agent
March 12th, 2012 // 6:57 am @ Tanmay // 8 Comments
Organizations that embark on process journey initiate rigorous training programs to ensure that everyone is trained to perform activities associated with specific roles. While these initiatives start with a lot of zest, somewhere, it loses steam. I have seen training programs becoming more of a “necessary evil” over a period of time. Trainers take these [...]
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The Secret Sauce of Process Improvement
February 9th, 2012 // 7:04 am @ Tanmay // 6 Comments
A colleague from a different department recently asked me, “When does this process improvement stop?”. In my response, I explained that improvement is not a destination, but a journey. It is a way for business to tune and align the operations to ongoing changes in the business. “If that is the case, how do you [...]
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Purpose Precedes Process
January 15th, 2012 // 5:57 pm @ Tanmay // 4 Comments
If process is a vehicle, purpose is the compass. Purpose gives a definite direction to processes. People (and their expertise) are the drivers. Technology acts as an accelerator. Most system implementation or change initiatives focus enough on the P-P-T – People, process and technology and somewhere along the lines, the focus on purpose blurs. I [...]
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Annual Management Improvement Carnival: Edition 2
December 21st, 2011 // 6:09 am @ Tanmay // 2 Comments
Here’s part-2 of the Management Improvement Carnival featuring the other two blogs that I love reading. The lot of people liked the first edition where I reviewed blogs of two masters – Seth Godin and Bob Sutton. Great Leadership by Dan McCarthy I (and blogosphere) knows Dan McCarthy as the host of “Carnival of Leadership [...]
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Building an Adaptable Team: 6 Ideas
November 21st, 2011 // 7:07 am @ Tanmay // 4 Comments
Ability to deal with rapid changes and uncertainties on the field is as critical a skill for organizations/teams as it is for the military troops. In military operations, lack of agility can have more serious and rapid consequences. In case of teams, individuals and organizations, the consequences may not be visible in a short term, [...]
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Giving Up On Need To Be ‘Rational Always’
November 15th, 2011 // 5:30 am @ Tanmay // 2 Comments
As we grow, our belief system firms up with notions of what is right and what is wrong. What works and what not. At work, our beliefs further solidify according to the context we work in. Understanding of data, facts and trends is important because it make us “rational”. The problem starts however, when we [...]
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A Steve Jobs Story on Simplicity and Focus
November 10th, 2011 // 6:07 am @ Tanmay // 6 Comments
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is on my reading list and I was curious to have some initial reviews about the book. Matthew E. May recently reviewed the book on his blog. In a post titled “The Zen Master of Subtraction: Steve Jobs”, Matt shares some very interesting stories/snippets about how Steve Jobs generated extreme [...]
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Productivity Reminders…
November 7th, 2011 // 4:55 am @ Tanmay // 2 Comments
… For Managers In knowledge world, productivity is hard to quantify. If you try to adopt old “command and control” style of management to drive knowledge workers, they get even less productive. Don’t command, empower. Don’t control, but lead them instead. Understand that knowledge workers cannot always be productive between 9 to 5. They have [...]
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Better Execution With ‘No-Follow Up’ Culture
October 7th, 2011 // 6:56 am @ Tanmay // 8 Comments
The primary focus of lean organizations/teams is to “eliminate waste”. In an increasingly complex work environment where execution is distributed between teams and geographies, one of the biggest wastes I have seen is “following-up on things”. A typical manager’s task list will feature about 30% (or even more) tasks which are simply following up (read [...]
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