When you are looking at what needs to change in your organization, it's helpful to look at what practices you are unwilling to change. Those may be the ones that most need changing.
Jim Collins, author of the bestselling Good to Great and Built to Last, talks about identifying your company's core values and the importance of protecting them. He also talks about companies that have mistaken traditional practices for values. There is a difference.
Your core value may be providing excellent customer service, and the associated practice may be responding to customer's email inquiries within two hours. When you are evaluating what can change in your business practices, it's tempting to say that you cannot change the two-hour response policy because it is a core value. The response time isn't the core value. It's just a business practice and should be open to change, if needed, especially if it no longer serves the core value.
For more information about this topic, please visit www.redlineconsult.com or send an email to info@redlineconsult.com.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
How To Conduct a Project Post Mortem
I got a bad haircut yesterday. As I am suffering through the after-effects, I find myself going through the same post mortem analysis that we use with our clients. Here’s an example of the steps I went through to try to learn from this experience.
Analysis: Project Haircut
Step 1) Identify real and hidden objectives for project, including all stakeholders in this investigation. Evaluate outcome against objectives.
Published Objective: shorter hair
Result: Success!
Stated Objective: Hair that is (1) shorter and (2) flattering, (3) in a short time and (4) at a low cost.
Result: 2 of 4 goals achieved. Marginal success.
Unstated Objective: Happy girl.
Result: Failure
Step 2) Admit failure.
Step 3) Review events and decisions.
Decision: go to cut-rate walk-in shop for haircut
Event: failure to clearly articulate desired hair style (due to insufficient prep)
Event: during haircut, constant oversight and revising of instructions in a desperate effort to undo the blunder of failing to provide good instructions in advance
Decision: not to state dissatisfaction with outcome
Step 4) Assess cost of failure: embarrassment and frustration (high cost)
Step 5) Identify lessons learned.
Time and cost are important, but when they become all-important, you get something much more costly.
Step 6) Communicate and apply lessons learned.
Train your managers to take their teams through these same steps at the end of every project. The team members will appreciate it, IF failure is viewed as a learning opportunity instead of a reason for punishment.
Too many project teams are praised for success when they know they failed to meet the objectives of the project. This insults their intelligence and eliminates their ability to take pride in their work when it is deserved. Praise should be given, but only for real accomplishment.
For more information about this topic, please visit www.redlineconsult.com or send an email to info@redlineconsult.com.
Analysis: Project Haircut
Step 1) Identify real and hidden objectives for project, including all stakeholders in this investigation. Evaluate outcome against objectives.
Published Objective: shorter hair
Result: Success!
Stated Objective: Hair that is (1) shorter and (2) flattering, (3) in a short time and (4) at a low cost.
Result: 2 of 4 goals achieved. Marginal success.
Unstated Objective: Happy girl.
Result: Failure
Step 2) Admit failure.
Step 3) Review events and decisions.
Decision: go to cut-rate walk-in shop for haircut
Event: failure to clearly articulate desired hair style (due to insufficient prep)
Event: during haircut, constant oversight and revising of instructions in a desperate effort to undo the blunder of failing to provide good instructions in advance
Decision: not to state dissatisfaction with outcome
Step 4) Assess cost of failure: embarrassment and frustration (high cost)
Step 5) Identify lessons learned.
Time and cost are important, but when they become all-important, you get something much more costly.
Step 6) Communicate and apply lessons learned.
Train your managers to take their teams through these same steps at the end of every project. The team members will appreciate it, IF failure is viewed as a learning opportunity instead of a reason for punishment.
Too many project teams are praised for success when they know they failed to meet the objectives of the project. This insults their intelligence and eliminates their ability to take pride in their work when it is deserved. Praise should be given, but only for real accomplishment.
For more information about this topic, please visit www.redlineconsult.com or send an email to info@redlineconsult.com.
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Welcome to Red Line Consulting Group's blog. This website was created to provide a forum for the Red Line team to publish informal messages and discussions related to Transforming IT, IT management and project management. Our goal is to foster conversation between Red Line management and the IT community at large.
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From time to time, we'll include updates about Red Line Consulting offerings and activities, reader polls, and Q&A sessions that may interest our visitors.
Thank you for visiting and we hope you find something useful!
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