Monthly Archives: January 2009
Connectivity Dependence
For a 24 hour period today I will be in an area with very poor Internet connectivity. This isn’t backpacking in the Andes, it’s downtown Tacoma, WA. This is in no way a condemnation of Tacoma, but a reminder that even in the urban environments we often have “dead zones” that we have to deal with. Continue reading
Do You Need a Business Case?
I frequently work with organizations at the lower end of the maturity scale, due to no fault of their own. In many cases business has rapidly outgrown the IT capability or capacity to support them, or there was a conscious prior decision to outsource much of the IT operation and is now being brought back in house albeit without the people or process infrastructure to support it. In these cases, IT Departments which demand to have solid business cases before they undertake any new work are doing themselves and their organizations a disservice. Continue reading
What Do We Look For in Our Leaders?
Given that leadership is something that virtually all people look for, what does leadership mean, and is it different for each person? Is it as simple as understanding that people will follow a person who will make some aspect of their life better, or is there more to it? Do people look for some of themselves in their leaders or do they want something different? Do people look to their leaders to inspire them? Do people look for different things in their leaders in good times and bad? Continue reading
Do Values Scale?
Recently I had the opportunity to dine with Ken Majer who has been doing outstanding work in the area of values and their effect on companies. He makes a great case that the corporate values should be established before the vision, and mission of a company as misalignment of values will inadvertently cause the strategies to fail during execution.
From a company growth perspective, companies in start-up mode typically involve only a handful of people. It will also be likely that each of these people will hold in common a value set, and be passionate about these values. Everyone in these companies will typically wear many hats and quite often cover for each other. In a small company, if these people did not share the same values they likely could not coexist. Likewise, if they did not share a passion for what they were doing they would likely not be in a start-up. Continue reading
The Push
Layoffs are bad. Layoffs hurt.
They are devastating to those people being laid off. The individuals being laid off and their families are hurt financially and emotionally. Assuming those performing the layoff are not masochists, they will go through a great deal of pain as well. The people who remain in the company after the layoff will have lost friends and in some ways grieve for them while they pick up their workload. Continue reading
Delivering Bad News
In a corporate setting there are many occasions when bad news must be shared. How management performs this critical function will go a long way in how they are perceived by those around them. We are currently experiencing a severe economic downturn. Bad news is everywhere. Companies missing targets. Sales people missing their bogey. Orders cancelled. Companies laying off staff. There is plenty of bad news to around, and pretty much everyone has felt at least a little of it. Continue reading
Anatomy of a Decision
Decisions are interesting things. It can be argued that not making decisions well can cause significant damage to any organization. A friend of mine, who happened to come out of the military, explained to me that decision making is the essence of leadership. Another friend of mine once told me that perhaps the most important job of an executive is to make decisions (and to make them decisively). Continue reading
