Archive for the ‘Collaboration’ Category

Monday night I had the opportunity to attend an Agile Groupies meeting.  It’s a semi-regular gathering of folks (developers, business analysts, product managers, etc.) interested in a specific approach, Agile, toward software development.

For those of you not familiar, Agile development focuses on smaller development teams, working on smaller deliverables, in highly iterative, somewhat less structured approach.  Part of the thinking is that if you are delivering in smaller, more discrete ‘chunks’ of working product, that the overall process will be more ‘agile,’ more adaptive to ongoing change during a product’s overall life cycle. The idea is to move away from ‘heavy’ less flexible disciplines, and back toward lighter, freer, approaches. Read the rest of this entry »

Leadership opportunities can be found in all kinds of places. Sometimes they pop up in the most unusual of circumstances and you adopt the role without even thinking about it.

Not too long ago, I led a group of motorcyclists on a ride. We started out in downtown Asheville, North Carolina. Traffic was heavy enough that even with GPS, safely and correctly leading the group through the lump of spaghetti masquerading as a series of closely clustered interchanges proved challenging.

15 minutes, and I’ve already had to make a half-dozen impromptu leadership decisions—each one with 5 friends mentally critiquing my every move.

So about 10am in the morning, we’re somewhere north of Asheville, as our small group begins to work its way westward. We’ve left the big city rush well behind us, we’ve unwound ourselves, and eventually roll into a small town that the crush of time seems to have left alone. It’s the sort of town where everything’s almost sleepy, peaceful, with that small town ‘clean’ about it.

Read the rest of this entry »

This paraphrases the situation a friend of mine, selling a sophisticated yet simple product, frequently encounters.  The fact the company he’s selling for can’t get past the objection reflects an indifference to customer sensitivity.  A lack of customer-centricity.

The question today is how to compete moving forward.  If you’re in a market like the U.S., Western Europe, or Japan, you face a mature slower-growing economic environment—current economic challenges notwithstanding.  Using the automotive industry as an example, growth of 20, 30% annually is considered good.  In North America, 2-3% is considered good.

So if your market is mature and you can’t count on a rising tide to float all boats, how do you prosper?

The days of competing primarily on product and price, particularly for commodity-oriented offerings, are dwindling.  If you’re selling a car, there are numerous ‘family sedans’ with almost identical feature sets, for nearly identical prices.

This suggests a new way of competing must become prevalent.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, so you have just read the title. You know what the article is about. Your expectations have been set. And, it has been pretty straight-forward thus far hasn’t it?

Over the past few months there have been a number of different articles debating whether we (in the US) are getting better or worse in our writing. The debate is often pretty black and white. One side cites examples of how Twittering (with its 140 character limits), SMS (phone texting with its 160 character limits), Instant Messaging, and the like are all promoting poor writing. The other side cites examples where people (particularly our younger generations) are incredibly effective at adjusting their messaging to suit the medium, and, how with all these new mediums—we are writing more than we ever have.

Regardless of Read the rest of this entry »

This is a question that shows up in discussion periodically. For moto-enthusiasts, it’s about the same as starting a discussion on tire pressures, what oil to use, how often to change it, and so on. There are countless answers, an endless number of experts to given them, yet they all fall short. The reason is that there is no absolute answer. It is akin to asking, “…what should be in my resume?” Once you’ve decided what it is you want to do, then what you put in the resume starts to speak for itself. Read the rest of this entry »

This past Friday, I had the opportunity to hear David Chinsky (David Chinsky & Associates) speak at this month’s CEO Connect. As a practitioner, and student of, effective business leadership I found his presentation very positive. His comments resonated strongly with me; enough so I wanted to expand on one topic:

“More than anything else, employees seek clarity from their leaders”

Call it what you will Read the rest of this entry »

When was the last time you asked, “Why?” Has it been awhile? Reflecting back on some of the more confrontational issues I’ve been involved in, it occurred to me that the one question often not asked is simply, Why?

If you have studied Six Sigma, you’ve heard about asking the 5 Whys. Taiichi Ohno, father of the Toyota Production System, is said to have liked using the 5 Whys. The intent is to repetitively ask questions until you understand the simple, core reason, underlying an otherwise seeming complex problem.

Consider this example Read the rest of this entry »

This item’s a bit granular compared to most of my posts. But since the topic came up today, using email to sent to a recipient’s mobile phone, I thought it was worth sharing for you.

The first thing, is that unless there’s a specific restriction on doing so, most mobile carriers will support receiving email addressed to their mobile customers and converting to SMS for transmission to their phone. For instance, if you’re with AT&T, you can simply send an email to 1231231234@txt.att.net, and AT&T will transmit the message as desired.

Of course, the question you may need to think through, Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps a good place to start is to use a baseline definition for Open Education. Wikipedia defines open education as a collective term referring to forms of education in which knowledge, ideas, or important aspects of teaching methodology or infrastructure, are freely shared over the internet. From my perspective we need to clear up a misnomer or two. All too often when we see open, we think free. And when we see freely share, we’re thinking free for all.

With open education, the key focus needs to be improved accessibility (i.e. freely share) at a significantly lower cost (i.e. compared to conventional places of higher education). Employing contemporary technologies along with a new way of thinking, we might also see improved flexibility in education. Read the rest of this entry »

One reason is, Trust.

Trust is both and emotional and logical act. Emotionally, it is where you expose your vulnerabilities to people, but believing they will not take advantage of your openness. Logically, it is where you have assessed the probabilities of gain and loss, calculating expected utility based on hard performance data, and concluded that the person in question will behave in a predictable manner. In practice, trust is a bit of both. I trust you because I have experienced your trustworthiness and because I have faith in human nature.

SSON, the Shared Services & Outsourcing Network, recently posted a good article on the general topic of deep change. There are innumerable articles on the topic. The challenges can technical, financial, cultural, operational, organizational, political, compensatory, and more. Perhaps one of the best books, which I’ve referenced previously, is Jim Collins‘, “Good to Great.” While I recommend reading the entire book, he provides a good summary of it on his http://www.jimcollins.com site.

One reason that seems to be generally overlooked is Read the rest of this entry »