Announcing The Leadership Quadrant Seminar 2008

Those who've read Managing the Gray Areas know that the idea for the book germinated from a seminar I led with productivity consultant Jerome Jewell at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Titled The Leadership Quadrant: 4 Ps for Organizational Excellence, the seminar explored current thinking around Principles, People, Productivity, and Process.

The Constitution Center is a unique venue, as the museum's programs can be incorporated into the event, and serve to generate deep discussion about the elements that bring about long term organizational excellence. The variety of the participants' backgrounds (which, at the last one, spanned healthcare, manufacturing, and criminal intelligence), also serve to ofer unique ideas.

Well, Jerome and I decided to do the seminar again, and make it an annual thing. So, I'm pleased to announce that our next Leadership Quadrant seminar will be October 22nd and 23rd, 2008. at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. And this one has been revised to include new concepts and lessons from the last seminar, plus elements covered in Managing the Gray Areas. Below is a link to learn more.

Act now, as seats are limited. We keep the group small to accomodate meaningful discussion and exercises.

The Marengo Group – Leadership Quadrant Seminar

When money is not the answer to Healthcare

When researching the Heathrow Terminal 5 project story, I came across the word 'Projectitis'. The implication there was that large projects were just inherently too difficult and complicated ever to go smoothly. In fact there is a working paper from the King's Fund in UK called Projectitis which addresses a different issue.
The King's Fund is a charitable foundation concerned with improving health and health care. It carries out research, policy analysis and development activities by working independently, in partnerships and through funding.
The working paper is part of a series with the general theme of Whole Systems Thinking. It discusses the problem of funding large, complex projects in the highly political field of public health. It uses the example of a collaborative learning project aimed at finding new ways of spending development money to improve health services for the elderly.
Among the problems the authors describe are:

• The small project team is separate from the many thousands of people delivering the services on a regular basis. To the thousands - at all levels - the project is seen as a distraction from the 'real work' and no artefacts of value to them will be delivered as a result;
• Project philosophy is better suited to delivering concrete objectives that can be scoped out at the outset;
• Project teams need the support of those who command resources - and these people need to be convinced of the benefits that will result. But the political funding cycle forces a rapid execution cycle with not enough time for solid results to be achieved;
• The project goal is frequently based on political rather than practical motives. The incentive for the project team is rather to be visibly entrepreneurial rather to deliver a solid result.

The closely reasoned paper goes on to describe the difficulty of defining, funding effectively, executing and consolidating results of projects in such a complex environment. The conclusion, and the authors' reason for coining the word 'Projectitis', is that funding of projects like this need longer timeframes for funding and more solid objectives.

Dried Goat Sandwich

UK hits the wall on IT innovation and starts packing a new lunch. ...

... "For a sector supposedly driven by innovation, times are tougher than a dried goat sandwich. " ...

Via Computing UK: Lack of innovation

Collaboration and Bottom-Up Planning: The Next Generation of Project Management

Andrew Filev has an interesting blog site, Project Management 2.0, highlighting recent trends in project management toward more collaborative practices.

Although it's in support of his web-based collaborative project management tool, Wrike, it's not a sales-oriented blog and is chock-full of forward-thinking concepts.

I like his blog entry on leveraging Top-Down and Bottom-Up Project Management, something I've often endorsed as well. Check it out...

Project Management 2.0

Communicating IT Value

Nice tips on transforming the IT value discussion, such as leveraging the role of the business sponsor and integrating IT initiatives in the business agenda. ...

... "burden of defending IT initiatives as standalone project is eliminated; instead the business leader adopts the IT project as a core enabler of the business strategy. " ...

Via CIO Asia: Tips for communicating value of IT

Service Desk Defined

A good, yet challenging, definition of the service, or help, desk. ...

... "Service Desk Definition:

- resolves 60% or more of incoming incidents and requests without any escalation

- improves customer satisfaction significantly, when first level resolution is at 50% or more

- reduces costs and time to fix incidents

- keeps businesses running efficiently " ...

Via Service Desk Institute: SDI's Service Desk Definition

Use Information to Empower and Satisfy

Software-enabled business processes can become too rigid and restrict a company's ability to do the right thing for customers. Here's interesting use of software analytics and business logic to empower the workforce to increase customers satisfaction levels. ...

... "Many calls are not resolved first time because the person who answers the phone is not authorized to do something – refund something or expedite it. Yet, all too often the data required to make the decision is available at that point. The status of the order, the customer and pricing rules are all known. " ...

Via B-EYE: Customer Decisions