About time. And product. And being more deliberate.
The first step to a collaborative environment is to banish questions. Yes, banish the question mark from all conversation. Questions reinforce heirarchial relationships rather than build the peer-to-peer relationships necessary for innovative, effective collaboration. Step #1. Everyone is smart and everyone’s knowledge is of equal value. A question forces someone else to make something for …
Continue reading “Want Better Collaboration – Stop Asking Questions”
I’m reviewing an excellent presentation [pdf] on the agile software development landscape when two bullet points on Scrum’s daily meetings stopped me: Chickens and Pigs are invited. Only Pigs can talk. It took Googling to decipher the metaphor. Though it goes against my earlier stifling team work post, identifying who’s involved and who’s committed is …
Your new project is scary – though isolated and contained, the timeline ridiculous, the deadline immediate. The team is understandably nervous. What’s the easiest way to success? Institute French Hours – or what we’ve (until now) called a Sprint. Here are the 4 rules of French Hours: You can’t do it all the time. Every …
American, Delta, United, and US Airway have either flirted with for filed for bankruptcy in the past 18 months. To provide some guidance in these tough times, Forbes suggests 10 Ways to Fix the Airline Mess. Of the 10 suggestions, 8 are Repeating the Same Action, Expecting a New Result, – have the US government …
“Hardball involves playing the edges, probing that narrow strip of territory—so rich in possibilities—between the places where society clearly says you can play the game of business and those where society clearly says you can’t.” An exerpt from the Harvard Business School’s The Hardball Manifesto. The article’s examples of Hardball companies – Wal-Mart, Southwest Airlines, …
Continue reading “Pushing the Envelope of Business Requires a Strong Identity”
He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line. This exerpt from The Case of the Empty Soap Box at Jon Strandes’ Storyblog is an excellent example …
An architect once designed a cluster of buildings. When asked by the landscape crew where to pave the sidewalks, he told them to plant grass between all the buildings, wait a year, then, after the occupants had worn the most useful paths, the architect told the landscape crew to pave the pathways that the occupants …
2 minutes 36 seconds is the industry average for a McDonald’s drive-thru transaction. How does Steven Bigari keep his 12 franchises under half that? Outsourcing. All the drive-thru orders at his Missouri resturants are taken by a call center in Colorado Springs – increasing his capacity 15%. Brilliant. Original Article: New York Times, 18 July …
That was the mantra uncovered with each of the hotel concierge interviews we conducted a couple years back. Anticipating need is an excellent model for the customer relationship. It inherently means that the service provider – account manager, waiter, concierge, project manager – has a deep understanding of their service. Deep enough to know what …
Even today, with all the Internet offers, shopping is often purchasing a product without first-hand experience with it. Our customer research has proven time and time again that if the product can be handled – it’s more likely to be sold. Until now, it was nearly impossible for customers to actually try out a product …