As a business leader, if you think “costs” are only the ones where you spend real money, think again. Have you ever realized the costs of: having an inefficient leadership team? setting wrong examples? not treating people well? not aligning middle managers with vision at the top? long unnecessary meetings and deadlocked debates? efforts spent […]
Have you ever experienced the following? You complete a project and then do a small ‘post-mortem / retrospective analysis’ of what went well and what did not. You then document these lessons in a nice looking template and share it with all stakeholders before getting onto the next project. Next project looks exciting in the […]
Most organizational/team improvement initiatives we undertake involve change – from current state of affairs to desired state. Change is hard and painful and necessary for growth/survival. Process improvement is all about managing change – and in my view, change (and its respective benefits) does not happen when you: Keep thinking big without starting small: It […]
I wrote earlier about “11 Things Project Managers & Leaders Should Never Do” and then continued the chain of thoughts with another post titled “7 (More) Things Project Managers & Leaders Should Never Do. This is the final part of this series which is compiled to form a handy and portable summary “25 Things Managers […]
Yesterday, over a cup of coffee, my friend asked me about my first book and what was my approach towards writing it. I said that I took “project approach”. This lead to an immediate realization that everything we do is a project, be it loosing your weight, writing a book, painting your home, getting a […]
In pursuit of improvement, it is very important to get to the root-cause. If you don’t know “why” an improvement is needed – you won’t improve in the right areas. “Why” should come before “what”, “how” and “when” because “why” clarifies the direction. The hallmark of a learning organization is that they ask “why” more […]
The rubber meets the road when you, as a business leader… deliver real business results to customers (not just deliver an excellent pitch with an impressive powerpoint) start executing relentlessly (not just define your strategy on paper at an off site planning retreat) implement improvements in your processes (not when you create that good looking […]
I heard this statement a few years back from one of my colleagues – “Training is a waste of time, people just don’t engage.” This statement sparked some intense debate that shaped my own thoughts on training. (I wrote earlier about taking a holistic view of training). To ensure that employee training is NOT a […]
‘Status quo’ means ‘existing state of affairs’. Status quo is popular because it has worked so far – and hence has many defenders. At workplace, people constantly defend the status-quo because as humans – we fear change. We don’t like uncertainty that comes with change. We love comfort. A few years back, when I was […]