Job rotation and Innovation

I have always beleived that more than 3 years in a role gets you to a state in which you can walk around with a coffee cup any day of the week you decide. Its also true, that only way to retain energy and innovate - This article How to keep innovating is just about what I keep echoing

Buridans ass and developing a human infrastructure for performance

Buridans ass is a classic where there is a thirsty and hungry donkey and lack of random events(a nudge of the donkey)  could be standing equidistant from both Food and Water.

In real-life there are 2 learnings from this - 

1. The difficult thing is to create ways by which you establish a means to measure and reward setting up the infrastructure for performance (getting food and water and the thirst donkey) in its place. Otherwise , there is always a winner take all of a new person who could potntially reap the benefits of the predecessor by nudging the donkey for performance

2. Innovation is the nudge. Most of us are in the process of hunting for food and water (incentives) with a process of linear thinking. The nudge creates the move to food or water in a different way since the world is full of opportunity anyway.

Credits: Fooled by randomness for leading me to Buridans ass

The negative spiral of poor process adherence.

Most companies are complaining of insufficient resources for the wrong reasons (I believe having more ideas and initiatives and hence no resources is a good scenario)

Short term

People want to do things fast (or atleast think they can) by short cutting processes. Poor process adherence (in intent) leads to poor quality and capability build up. This results in fires. Fires result in a surge in resource requirements. Sudden surges cant be met with external resources. They are met by redeployment from other processes and projects. By the time the problem is fixes, the other processes with poor resources are way behind schedules resulting in people want to things faster! - Indeed a fantastic negative spiral!

Long term

Further, in the long run, poor process adherence leads to no metrics and continuous improvement. Resulting in poor capability buildup (and inflexibility). This results in poor business efficiencies and results. This leads to fires and patchwork.

This is probably the only real reason to create and execute to processes even at the risk of first time being a little late - The net result will always be better than getting into the negative spiral

Systems thinking and Product planning - Theres a hole in the bucket dear Lisa

Systems thinking and Product planning - Theres a hole in the bucket dear Lisa

Most product planners (program managers and PMO) spend a lot of time taking calls to break negative loops and establishing positive spirals. It is easy to get caught in organizational politics and a new process into the "hole in the bucket" scenario.

The process vs. experience paradigm: Establishing the PMO and managing the change

Establishing the PMO ,especially a process for product introduction is a challenge. Any established company trying to establish a new process is "running the trains and laying the tracks" at the same time.
Any process that does not match with intuition (experience based) is discounted as a poor process. Similarly, any new process that does not throw new insights is also discounted as a heavy process for doing something intuitively or from experience. Hence, establishing benefit of a new process is balancing the fine line.
We have also heard common complaints that there is no spirit in the templates and deliverable. People are churning the wheels without the spirit - so what is the "spirit". There are also numerous form vs. content debates
A proposed methodology is
1. Fill the forms/templates/deliverable
2. Check with common sense, get feedback on the content from experts
3. Create a conclusion from the deliverable
4. Highlight issues and closure plans, force learning's from the team (and incorporate in process)

The benefit of the process is only if we can ramp-up learning and standardize across programs to get the benefits of experience standardized.

Every one of these steps must be orchestrated for key programs by the PMO. Hence, while PMO strives for training members on the deliverables, it is crucial to drive debate on the content and signoff on outputs.

Know your boss to profit

Attention span and learning differ. What you need to do to get your point across cannot be one formula fits all.

Readers - Reads everything/ Does not believe that it is work unless it has prose beyond 250 pages

Skimmers - Can retain 3 points. Needs to be 1 page and should be understood by all. Try the cabby first

Tearers - Cannot read until they criticise it

Discussers - Cannot read or understand unless explained. Usually prolonged discussions

Writers - Most difficult to get the point across - need to contribute to understand

You can do MBTI and other tricks to type cast your boss, but gettng your OWN fundamental definition of the boss is critical to get YOUR message across.