With the arrival of the holiday season comes the inevitable onslaught of television classics, including “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Home Alone”. While each are good movies in their own right, I wonder if the latter became a holiday staple largely based on the sheer number of times it was repeated in the first few…
I ran into James Governor at SAP’s Influencer Summit this week. As he points out in the comments on my inaugural post, James was the chief hassler to get me started on this blog. In the interim, he’s been both wildly supportive and correctly critical. Not surprisingly, we had an engaging and fascinating conversation about…
You can accomplish your management by walking around goals without actually walking around. The walking (or wandering) around was never the point. As I said in my initial 2006 post, For Hewlett and Packard, managing by walking around (MBWA) was a way to get everyone on the same page; what they believed was the secret…
One of the first articles we had to read during my recent HBS class was “Control in an Age of Empowerment” by Robert Simons. Even though the article was published in Harvard Business Review more than 10 years ago, I had never read it before and a quick poll of my classmates suggests very few…
In No Time to Think, Jack Trout claims we’ve become “a world of reactors, not thinkers.” In case you don’t recognize his name, Trout is the author of many marketing classics, including one of my personal favorites ‘The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing‘ which describes the First Mover Advantage. While technology was supposed to make us…
Because it’s been an uncharacteristic two full weeks since my last post, I thought I’d give everyone a quick update on what I’ve been up to. (No, Jerry, I haven’t decided to give up blogging, move to the Bahamas, and take up sailing.) I was a vacation during the week of July 4th – no…
How many strategy management mistakes can you count? 1. Failure to adequately communicate the strategy 2. Failure to explain how the strategy impacts individuals 3. No formal cascade of objectives between high-level strategy (pointy haired boss) and next level down (Dilbert) 4. No way to monitor progress towards achieving objectives Did I miss any?
I thought the debate as to whether business intelligence (BI) and performance management (PM) were the same thing had long since been settled. Imagine my surprise when Mark Smith points out in “BI Is Not Performance Management” that the discussion is alive and well. Rather than spill more ink documenting the differences between business intelligence and…
You can always count on Bob Hanson of Sarasota County for a good performance management story. Here’s one that I heard him tell recently: The Parks and Rec department struggled with recruiting and retaining lifeguards for the public pools. People viewed being a lifeguard as only a summer job, not a career, so job satisfaction…
Does the following resonate with you? “It seems that everywhere you turn, people are talking about performance management; vendors, consultants, press, public sector and commercial organizations alike. Amidst the buzz however, one troubling trend is beginning to emerge. Many performance management projects have languished, burdened by unrealistic expectations, delayed schedules, and intangible benefits. Performance management…