Unleashing Corporate Innovation: Identifying the Constraints
Corporate innovation struggles, and not from a lack of ideas or capital. More often, the constraints are time and attention.
5 Powerful Tactics for Engaged Remote Teams
Distributed teams, working out of the office, are becoming the norm. Much has been written about building effective remote teams – but are they truly engaged remote teams? Here are five things high-powered teams (and their leaders) must do to succeed (no technology required).
The Next Next Big Thing: AI Will Transform Your Business
The next big-impact advance in Information Technology will be Artificial Intelligence. In this article we lay out the simple case and detail the impact it will have on your business.
Change is Easy. Habits are Hard.
At technology conferences, vendor seminars, and user group, I enjoy the networking conversations - professionals looking to leverage each others' background, experience, and relationships, ostensibly to forward their own careers, but openly trying to solve a problem with a win-win for both sides of the connection. Inevitably, however, the conversations refine and regress down to a common theme - the classic oversimplification "change is hard". Much of the time, I'd wager that change in your organization is comparatively easy -…
Coffee Shop IT
A practical analogy for operating your IT function "like a business", with emphasis on design, usability, sustainability, and rigor. Think of your team as the boutique consulting firm that it really can be. The real payoff comes when you focusing on the built-in advantages of the internal team ...
How to Draw an Owl
On Documentation One recent afternoon I found myself in deep conversation with potential consulting partners, holding out for a difficult requirement: "Excellent Documentation". That's a tough one to quantify, let alone describe; why hold out for something at once critical and ineffable? Doesn't every project talk about the importance of providing documentation, yet rarely deliver it? Don't most people flip past the pages of detailed work process, going right to the keyboard to bang away, expecting tool tips and intuitive…
Business Proposals and The Lesson of Jabberwocky
When someone asks my opinion on their writing, I'll get fairly detailed; I've noted in the past that there is a lot of power and influence in the written word, and it's fairly important to get it done well, or your project proposals just never seem to get off the ground. This particular proposal suffered from a lack of direction; it didn't take the reader (the decision maker) through a clear progression. Admittedly, the subject matter was a bit technical and…
The Delicate Art of Pushing Back
Commiserating a week or so ago with an old friend, struggling mightily with some external consulting firm providing technology talent, developing customer management systems for Big Sales Company. There were some critical dependencies on the server side, and the (internal) project team needed some on-site assistance working through the issues. Ad hoc phone support was just not cutting it - but the external project lead was pushing back. It's very difficult to get on-site, dedicated help for these in-demand DB…
A Plea for Empathetic Communication
It's impossible to over-communicate Sounds a bit strong, but if you think through your real-world experiences, this shouldn't surprise anyone. No matter how hard you try, your message will be missed by someone ... Problem: It's all their fault! Rely on Web 2.0, and ... ... they won't subscribe to the RSS feed; they don't understand the concept, and have no other information sources that supply feeds ... they won't sign up for the email notifications; that feature is hidden,…
More On Executives (are Smarter than You Think; the 5 Biggest Misconceptions)
A recent post got a surprising amount of feedback - at least, different feedback than my other stuff. No flames, just folks agreeing with the ideas and wanting to engage in more direct conversation (phone calls, as opposed to blog comments or email - interesting ...) I've noted that people like to second-guess and/or heap scorn upon their executive management team, seeing them as disconnected, clueless, and capable of speed without forethought. However, my experience tells me these attitudes are…