A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how a breakout project team needs a kedge anchor to succeed. In sailing, the kedge anchor is sent out ahead of the main ship with a select team of sailors on a long boat. This team drops the anchor in just the right spot so that by pulling […]
The first quarter operations review is one of the highest leverage meetings of the year, as the actions taken as a result of this one meeting have a huge effect on the trajectory of your team – informing the next planning cycle and beyond. The problem is that these meetings can easily fall into the […]
Everyone wants to transform, but nobody wants to change. — Frederica Mathewes-Green Right now, there is a dynamic at work in your organization that is preventing innovation — ideas are getting lost in translation. In technology-driven businesses, there are two functionally and physically separate teams: the one that does the R&D, and the operations team that […]
I recently celebrated my professional birthday. It’s now been 10 years since I walked away from my last full-time corporate role. Feeling like it was time for something new, I chose to move from the stability of a corporate role to the rough and tumble world of freelancer. In my corporate career, I was the […]
We see it in other places all the time: a football team has a great game plan, dominates through the middle of the third quarter, then moves to a “defensive” plan, where their focus shifts to protecting the ball and running down the clock. The predictable outcome is that the opponent stops the run, receives […]
During a discussion with a trusted colleague, the topic turned to the relative rarity of meeting with people who have truly done their homework prior to holding a discussion. How many times have you opened that Zoom screen with someone who is clearly “winging it,” and starting with the sketchiest of intentions? We used to […]
We’ve all been in that meeting. You know, the one where you’re planning the upcoming year and, inevitably, the operating team wants to take on programs with the highest chance of return — the low-hanging fruit. But as the senior leader in the room, your intuition is telling you to sponsor one of the projects […]
I’ve noticed a pattern when speaking about, and helping clients implement, growth programs: when we talk about the portfolio of products under development, there is a tendency to assume that all of those investments have the same potential return. The key to developing a successful growth portfolio is realizing the basic truth: not all investments […]
If you’ve ever had the experience of watching a group of junior high kids (ages 10-14) in a basketball camp, you’ll notice that a very curious thing happens on the first day. When you roll the balls out on the floor and allow for some unstructured warm-up time, the kids automatically congregate into two groups: […]
I firmly believe that most major issues in a project are made in the first few hours of its life. Those early decisions are very important, and perhaps none more so than having a good team and solid commitment in place. What you need now is to invest in the human resources and organizational tools […]
