Harvard Business Publishing

There are times in life when I expect something to be perfect. When I open the box of my new Macbook Air, for example. Or when I take money out of the ATM. In most cases though, I expect imperfect. And in organizations, I think that's a good thing -- but not in the if-I-expect-imperfect-I-won't-be-disappointed sense. I'm not suggesting you settle for imperfect. I'm telling you to shoot for it. Several years ago, a large financial services company asked me to help them roll out a new performance management process for 2,000 people. "Why me? Why not do it yourselves?" I asked my prospective client. This might seem strange coming from a consultant, but I always think companies are better off doing things themselves if they can. "We tried!" she responded, with exasperation. "We identified the standards we expect from people. We created the technology system to write the reviews.... Keep Reading »

There are times in life when I expect something to be perfect. When I open the box of my new Macbook Air, for example. Or when I take money out of the ATM. In most cases though, I expect imperfect. And in organizations, I think that's a good thing -- but not in the if-I-expect-imperfect-I-won't-be-disappointed sense. I'm not suggesting you settle for imperfect. I'm telling you to shoot for it. Several years ago, a large financial services company asked me to help them roll out a new performance management process for 2,000 people. "Why me? Why not do it yourselves?" I asked my prospective client. This might seem strange coming from a consultant, but I always think companies are better off doing things themselves if they can. "We tried!" she responded, with exasperation. "We identified the standards we expect from people. We created the technology system to write the reviews.... Keep Reading »

By definition, a dead change agent isn't a good change agent. Most leaders have attended the requisite change management workshops and learned how to analyze stakeholders, develop communications plans, and build momentum and skills for change. Good stuff - as far as it goes. Problem is, no one ever tells you that to be a good change agent, you have to be willing to die in order to thrive. Okay, not literally. You have to be willing to put your job or position at risk by having some difficult, but crucial conversations - to ensure that good decisions are made and the odds for success are on your side. Consider a case in point. Alberto, a talented executive, sold in his company's first ERP implementation. His is a familiar story with the project delivering short of expectations and timelines and costs coming in twice the original plan. Alberto is no... Keep Reading »

Recently, I asked some business executives for their top three IT wishes. Across the board, their responses echoed a common plea: "I wish IT projects would come in on time and on budget." Funny thing is - this very reasonable sounding request is actually quite unreasonable. You see, we are no longer simply automating existing manual processes. We are trying to change the way people think and behave. Who really knows what's going to happen when... Field agents are given access to real time business information High priced consultants are given a virtual workspace that consists of instant messaging, telephony, and audio and video conferencing as well as real-time document sharing, virtual white boards, high-end video conferencing, and PC-to-PC audio and video conferencing Franchisees are given a Web-based system to quickly source parts that their customers need from any major manufacturer Consumers are able to collect and redeem points for... Keep Reading »

In the course of doing research for our forthcoming book, "Discovery Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity," we have spent a lot of time researching disappointments, redirections, and outright flops. Many of these involve IT in some substantive way. I was recently asked by reporter to comment on why IT projects, particularly government-sponsored IT projects, are so prone to failure, and it got me to thinking about the lessons we've learned from other kinds of failures. With today's headlines screaming about how government is taking a much larger role in our economy -- and by extension in our lives -- I thought it would be helpful to consider what we know about why governmental projects tend to flop and what we might want to consider doing about it. Many of these lessons are equally applicable to IT flops of other kinds, but since almost every... Keep Reading »

One great way to find management insights is to study a field other than your own. By becoming a tourist, a traveler, it's easier to be curious. You can ask big questions since you're free from the baggage of your own ego. It's one reasons movies like Apollo 13, Hoosiers, and Miracle are popular films among management types looking for inspiration, rather than stories pulled directly from the business world. One recent find is the story of the Polaris nuclear missile management team. Could you design a breakthrough technology, under competition, short deadlines and the defense of the free-world at stake? These guys did. The story is told by the boringly titled book The Polaris System Development. Although published by Harvard University Press, its not easy to find. The best summary I've found is from, of all places, Budapest University. Here's an excerpt: Once given the mandate and start-up... Keep Reading »

If your company is like most, it’s tackling more and more projects that consume expanding levels of precious resources but fail to generate commensurate business results. In Connecting the Dots: Aligning Projects with Objectives in Unpredictable Times (Harvard Business School Press, 2003), Cathleen Benko and F. Warren McFarlan maintain that U.S. companies spend roughly $2.3 trillion on projects—defined as efforts that have a discrete beginning, end, and deliverable— every year. And yet the vast majority of companies don’t have a strategy for managing their projects in a way that captures their full value and effectively maps them to the needs of the organization. The consequence? “Close to $1 trillion in underperforming investments in the United States alone over the last five years,” the authors note. What explains this phenomenon? Companies are launching an increasingly wider range of project types as well as a far higher number of projects than in... Keep Reading »

by Melissa Raffoni Strategic planning gets all the cachet and all the ink, but the most creative, visionary strategic planning is useless if it isn't translated into action. Especially now, in a sluggish economy, execution takes on greater importance. It's what separates the companies that prosper in hard times from the ones that go under. Why can even the most brilliant strategies founder in the implementation phase? "When things haven't gone as planned, it's often because the process wasn't well defined, we missed a step, or we didn't follow a specific sequence," says Gordon Woodfall, former president and general manager of Waltham, Mass.-based Thermo KeyTek (now Thermo Fisher Scientific). The execution phase forces you to translate your broad-brush conceptual understanding of your company's strategy into an intimate familiarity with how it will all happen: who will take on which tasks in what sequence, how long those tasks will take, how... Keep Reading »

A number of years ago, when my colleagues and I first began our research on how companies were preparing for the changing demographics of the workforce, we were amazed to find 85-year-old aerospace engineers successfully at work! From a company perspective, the reasons for this were straightforward -- the industry was then already faced with a severe talent shortage. But why were these folks happily devoting their golden retirement to work? Today, it's clear the answer to that question has two important components. First, lots of people are finding that they want to work "forever"-- that the benefits of intellectual stimulation, social interaction, physical activity, and, of course, supplemental income, are ones they value more than endless rounds of leisure activity. Today, more than three-quarters of adults approaching retirement say they plan to continue working in some capacity. But the second reason is important, too -- companies are beginning to... Keep Reading »