Responsibility Mapping
Clarity of responsibilities… …is at the heart of management, coaching, measurement, rewards, etc. Crisply defined and reinforced responsibilities increase focus, integration and performance. I cannot think of a more important layer to execution than making sure everyone knows who owns, who is supposed to do, who needs to review before an action, and those who […]
Form, Instructions and an Example
It often surprises me… … at the busiest point of putting together a survey, after spending person-days creating an elegant survey instrument, very few people seem to have given much thought to those receiving the request for some of their time. This concept seems to apply to all sorts of data collection, certain types of analysis, or anything which relies on others […]
Enterprise View: Collaboration & The Directed Community
In a recent discussion… … we were continuing our focus on eliminating the noise around collaborative technologies and tools. As we thought about how to best represent collaboration, one of my colleagues simplified the problem (paraphrasing slightly): “It’s not about the direction of the information flow, it’s about the number of contributors and the number […]
Defining Program Management
Program Management… …provides the working environment in which we can effectively manage complex business initiatives. It provides the coordination, discipline and management routines among the all the moving parts required to effectively achieve our business objectives. This is a big concept, so let’s start with an example During one of my consulting engagements, I had the privilege […]
The Project Process
“This is a project… …So, why do we need to talk about process?” For discrete projects of enough size and risk, one of the first layers of structure to add-in to managing the project, is to think about the project as a process. The process helps define what the project’s “customer” wants. How much she is willing to pay for it, […]
Defining Project Management
Everybody “knows”… …what project management is. And yet, based on my 30 years of management, management consulting and engineering consulting experience, the most powerful and ubiquitous management concept- managing discrete work- is rarely done well. At the its most fundamental level, most every assignment you have ever been given can be thought of as a project. What you […]