Management, technology, random thoughts
Inertia is tough to overcome. We become comfortable, and in becoming comfortable, we become less hungry, more steady state. Energy comes from uncertainty and instability- channeling the energy leads to movement, hopefully in the right direction.
To begin channeling the energy, we have to first take a step; we need to make a decision to start. Continue reading “Decision and Discipline”
It’s not news that Shakespeare had Marcus Brutus tell us that “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune…”, and that the failure to attend to the tide results in misery, and being forever doomed to the shoals of life. Anyone who passes their time on the sea also knows the advantage of making the tide for a journey, or even for the most productive times for sea angling.
It’s equally not news that “time and tide wait for no man” – a quote attributed to Chaucer in the 1300s, but believed to have older roots. There is a suggestion that the “tide” in the above quote refers to a season, rather than a nautical tide, but the intent is the same. We can’t hold back the progression of the tide, the seasons, or the clock.
I’ve just finished reading Derek Sivers “Anything you want“, and it reminded me of something really critical. Everything we do, in any business, should be in service of our customers. We forget that to our detriment.
KRIs, KPIs, KRAs, SLAs, OLAs, a smorgasbord of three letter acronyms, all intending to provide meaningful measurement of performance and delivery.
But have we reached the point of metrics madness? Continue reading “Metrics Madness”
Peter Drucker writes in his book that doing the right thing is one of the primary attributes of the “Effective Executive“. But how do we know that what we’re doing is the right thing at the right time?
In an ideal world, principles should inform and guide everything we do. We can think of principles as a sort of operating system, the context in which we execute for our organisations. To be principled has a moral, personal meaning, as in the OED definition: Continue reading “Where the right things get done – at the intersection of Principles, Mission and Goals.”
Imagine you’re at the bottom of a tall mountain; what do you know of what can be seen from the top? Now imagine you’re half-way up – you can see the path below you (and could act as a guide for it) but cannot see the summit. If you’re at the summit, you have the perspective to be a guide for anyone coming from the base of the mountain to the top, and can also see the landscape for a considerable distance around. It’s a (somewhat hackneyed) analogy of sorts for a management career, isn’t it? Continue reading “Leadership and the importance of multiple viewpoints”
It seems obvious, right? Without effort, nothing of value happens. I’ve been batting around thoughts on focus, attention and potential in my head for quite a while now, but the thing that I believe we often overlook is how important it is to first make an effort. Continue reading “The importance of effort”