I once read a story of a boy who found a bag full of dried clay balls when he was playing in the field. Not sure about what to do with them, he started throwing them in the pond to enjoy the ripples. Just then, he dropped one of the balls and saw a glittering […]
W. Edwards Deming, the pioneer and guru in quality revolution wrote the following paragraph when commenting on Peter Senge’s book “The Fifth Discipline” and it instantly struck the chord. Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of […]
In an organization, work flows horizontally but organizations are structured vertically in hierarchies. With seniority and promotions up the order, a person tends to drift away from the place where real business value is created; the place where real action happens; where problems are clearly visible. They end up expecting results without caring about the […]
The pace of change is accelerating and business leaders who are responsible for improvements need keep up with the pace. While plan-do-check-act methodology has been around for long, the time it took was way longer. For organizational improvements (and the personal ones), what do we need today? What would business expect from improvement initiatives? A […]
In 1982, University of Wisconsin researchers studying the human learning pattern videotaped two bowling teams during multiple games. When these tapes were shown to team, they were edited differently. One team was shown the video of all their mistakes and the other team was shown the video of their good performances. Both teams improved, but […]
Consider this story: Jay is a newly hired project manager whose primary accountability is to manage a large client account and ensure that all projects within that account adhere to scope, time, cost and quality parameters. The primary KRA for Jay was to drive profitability and customer satisfaction (and hence repeat business). Jay did a […]
Lisa Haneberg is a great friend who is an expert (and a lifelong student) on the craft of management. I have been following her blog and her work since last six years and she has greatly influenced my own blogging journey so far. Lisa is an expert in the areas of organization development, management, leadership, […]
People are promoted to lead others based on their seniority in technical areas. Others become managers after getting a management degree from a b-school that never taught them the fundamentals of dealing with people. They end up putting off people through their behavior and set a wrong example for their subordinates to follow. In a […]
My last post emphasized on balancing processes and practices with emotion when leading projects. HR folks know this as “employee engagement”. In simplest terms, people have a choice to do a great job or a mediocre one. They exercise this choice based on the emotional connection with purpose of project/team/organization. Why all this buzz around […]