Don’t should all over your next BPM project

Recent research has shown that there is a simple method to vastly improve the chance that people will do what you want. For the moment I’ll hold off on what that is, because the story starts way before this. To get a BPM project right, a few things need to happen. Challenge 1: Capture and […]

There’s no stopping a technology whose time has arrived

About ten years ago, I visited my aunt who’s a famous photographer.  She had a new, top of the line Nikon digital camera with a 8 MP resolution.  I was amazed at the clarity of the photos and how you could manipulate and print the crisp digital images.  I really wanted one, but the $5,000 […]

An old tool for a new way to communicate – story

I’m at sales leadership seminar in San Francisco with teams from Salesforce.com, Oracle and other leading Bay Area high tech firms.  We are learning to hone our skills using a high tech communication tool that’s recently become the darling of researchers, marketers and startups seeking VC.  Not only does this tool enhance recall by over […]

Collaboration makes the B2B model work

What makes a successful B2B business model? If you’re downstream in the supply chain, addressing this question with finesses is perhaps the most critical decision that most companies will make. Thoughtful companies make these choices as a matter of strategy. Their less thoughtful cousins tend to fall into ways of working as the path of […]

Don’t punish me for using your process

I just had a 2 and a half hour hole blown in what had started out as a massively productive day. Indeed, I’m so frustrated as I write that I’m going to grab a quick bite and try to squeeze in a run during lunch hour.  Here’s the story and here’s why it matters for […]

Escape process’ death valley, or how to tell a cat from a washing machine

Ken Robinson recently delivered yet another great talk on the state of American education.  He pointed out that countries that take a more organic approach (e.g. Finland) perform much better overall than those who take a mechanistic, standardized approach (e.g.  The United States with “No Child Left Behind”, emphasis on testing). Remarkably, the organic approach, […]

Process decides fragile and antifragile acquisitions

What type of company makes a good target to be acquired? There are the obvious revenue, strategic, market, product, and R&D considerations. Those are all opportunity plays and are in themselves good reasons, but what about the risk? How do you decide in advance which companies can be acquired without being destroyed? For that, there […]

It takes two to design an app? Um…duh…what about integration?

At the Structure Data Conference this morning, Kleiner Perkins partner Michael Abbott encouraged people to think about apps from the perspective of engineers and designers. What strikes me about his comment is how nothing has changed from the early days in technology, where everyone agreed the end user experience needs to be managed alongside the […]

Turning pixels into atoms

That’s the creative tag line for Makie Lab, a UK-based startup that allows children to design their own custom dolls via the iPad, print them on a 3D printer, and have them delivered in the space of two weeks. It is a personalized service standout story. Space This service knows its audience. If there’s one […]

When companies break – business process for startups

Recently, I’m finding that I’m working with more and more startups. This is exciting – to get an early glimpse at tomorrow’s industries and products. It’s also rewarding in that it shows that today’s startups (as opposed to their extinct Web 1.0 ancestors) are consciously leveraging the proven body of management theory in savvy new ways. I took […]

Just tell me what’s going on

We have a basic human need to know what’s happening around us. More and more, companies are addressing this need by exposing parts of their process that never saw the light of day in the past. Done well, it reduces anxiety and helps make customers into fans of whatever company they’re engaging with.  Three recent […]

Mailbox takes the mystery out of waiting

Throughout the weekend I’ve been hooked on a simple app that actually tells me very little.  Last week, based on stellar reviews (and maybe some hype), I signed up for an account with the email inbox management app Mailbox.  That’s when the waiting game began. Unlike many online services that do slow rollouts, only alerting you when […]

Is your company doing the Harlem Shake?

Companies put a great deal of focus on goals and strategies and often less effort goes into the tactics and guidance for how work actually gets done. If you’ve seen the viral video for the Harlem Shake, it illustrates what most companies look like under their corporate covers. Doing the Harlem Shake Enjoy this short […]

Old rules on new battlefields

It is easy to think we’re the first to live in such disruptive times. Not even close to true. I recently visited a Civil War battlefield and had a great conversation with one of the reenactment actors who happened to be a history buff.  In our twenty minute conversation, he told me two remarkable, very […]

The competitive advantage of 1,000,000 new ideas

Employees doing the hardest work almost always have the best view of how to improve the work they do. But all too often this insight into work process is squandered simply because no one asks for their feedback. They are paid to work, not to think, no? No. Not at Toyota. An elegant solution to […]

How Einstein would have managed process

Sometimes change is so gradual yet so ubiquitous that we don’t see the enormous implications of what’s really happened until somebody says it in a new way. I recently had such an experience when I read Google’s Michael Jones on How Maps Became Personal in the Atlantic.  A lot of the ideas in this piece jumped […]