My cousin recently joined a health care startup, only to learn the business model that sold him on the job was still under debate. An in-person meeting was planned to hash it out, so I asked a simple question: Would there be a facilitator? He knew I meant, in this case, someone skilled at guiding …
Forget Kanban, SAFe, LeSS, and even my own system Full Scale agile™ (FuSca™): If you are a manager pondering how to adopt Agile, your direct-report team can be there in just one meeting. Just as quickly, you will become the kind of servant/transformational leader generations of management gurus have talked about, but few managers actually …
TED talks by managers who try radically weird leadership practices and get amazing results… those are the exceptions that prove the rule, right? If the way most companies are run is a problem, more would change, right? Sorry, but no. The reason companies succeed while using standard practices is because they are competing against companies …
Back when “team building” was the hottest fad in management, no activity garnered as much derision as “trust falls.” The self-proclaimed team builder would have the team gather behind one member and ask that person to fall backwards, trusting their peers to catch them. The ridiculous, and much-ridiculed, idea was that somehow not letting another …
“‘I’m here so that this company doesn’t hire someone like me to come in and destroy your career.'” That’s the ear-catching line a successful litigator of harassment lawsuits uses to get the attention of executives glued to their phones when he is introduced as a speaker. Mark Baute is quoted in an article in The …
Any systematic approach to managing work is better than no system. And any of the existing Agile frameworks are better than a “waterfall” method where Agile is more appropriate, the majority of cases. But you don’t need Crystal or SAFe or even my Full Scale agile™ to be Agile. At the same time Scrum was …
Millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money are funneled into a wide range of startups every year. Any taxpayer might reasonably ask, what do we get for our money? Quite a lot, according to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF): “Some well-known firms, such as Qualcomm and Symantec, received early support from the NSF program. …
Many people are skeptical of science these days. Though my successes over 30 years have been based on scientific learning, I understand why. Scientists make mistakes like everyone else, but the profession makes it easier to admit that, so the public sees the errors. Some cross ethical lines, as in every profession. Most scientists have …
Do you work for an extremely effective organization? No offense, but I doubt it, after writing a paper on the concept. Let’s try a “thought experiment,” though. I will share a high-level summary of the characteristics of an effective organization according to science, footnoted with my sources so you can double-check me. Then I’ll take …
For those of you trying to decide right now the best way to get creative about your products, processes, or problems, a new report is worth a look. Nesta, “The Innovation Foundation” in the United Kingdom, recently released A Compendium of Innovation Methods. It was written by 24 contributors including researchers, leaders of innovation organizations, …
Free Sources of Management Studies Those who have read my earlier posts on evidence-based management have learned about “The Management Knowledge/Practice Gap”; discovered one reason for it is that “Good Evidence is Hard to Find”; and become skeptical readers about science because “Studies Say, Question Articles about Studies.” Now comes your chance to close the …
