Think about your career as if it were business travel. If you do not plan to stay in the job for long, you behave like a hotel guest. You are not planning to change anything – and normally you won’t. You may leave some coffee stains on the carpet, collect all toiletries and, by mistake, […]
Tag: success
Assess Your Process Performance Potential
My partner, a good company that wants to become excellent, came up with a list of questions that allows to assess and score their business processes. We decided not to call it a maturity model. We call it a Process Performance Potential chart because it gives you an indication of whether we are potentially on the right […]
Weekend Reading: Silicon Startup Secrets, All-in-One
If #hi-tech #PaloAlto #Stanford #dropout #entrepreneur #disruptive #innovation and #fraud are prominent among your mental hashtags, read this book: “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup” by John Carreyrou – and you will get all-in-one.
THE ANSWER IS EXCELLENCE
There are three ways to improve business performance of any organization: Technology – Processes – People. New technology may give you a sizeable performance boost. However, it will NOT guarantee you a lasting competitive advantage because your competitor will probably invest in similar equipment or technology. New equipment will not protect you in case of […]
Always Stand Up for Your Real Team
As a leader, you have to always stand for your team, right? Wrong. Rather, first, you need to make sure you realize which team is “your team.” That may sound counterintuitive but that’s life. Being a manager (team lead, manager, director, etc.), you are in charge of a unit consisting of several individuals. If you […]
Canada Cost Post-Saving Math
(On the photo, a post(wo)man delivering mail to the residents of Freising, Munich area) Door-to-door mail delivery to urban customers has been phased out in Canada in the last five years. This was a major cost-saving initiative of Canada Post. As a performance improvement specialist, I doubt its value for Canadians. Without a doubt, there is […]
Advanced Project Management Secret: Shared Values
Requirements can make or break your projects. Depending on your personal level of PM maturity, you will make sure that you have clarified them on one, two, or three levels. Here’s what can further improve your chances to deliver the project successfully: shared values of the team. The secret is in the proper composition […]
The Recipe for Project Success: 3 Requirements + 10 Values
The three key reasons why some projects fail are: Requirements Requirements Requirements There is but a grain of joke in this PM joke: requirements are key. In real life, three different sets of requirements could and should be identified during the project initiation. Requirements-1: The Spec. First requirements that come to mind are the “standard” […]
Shared Values of Self-Made Millionaires
There’s an interesting article posted recently on LinkedIn Pulse. Jeff Haden put this in his post headline, making it almost instantly viral: “8 of 10 Self-Made Millionaires Were Not ‘A’ Students. Instead, They Share 1 Trait.” The trait, of course, is their willingness to learn. While I agree with Jeff Hadden, that is not news. […]
Elon Musk Q7
A few months ago, I answered this question on Quora: “How can Elon Musk put in 80-100 hours a week and still have a social life or time for exercise, etc.?” My answer collected an incredible number of views and upvotes – a good indicator that this is (A) a hot topic and (B) my […]