This Focused Performance Weblog is a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project Management and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes). If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Friday, January 14, 2005
More Friday Farrago -- Here's the rest of what I started last week...
The value of good management appears again in an article by Stephen J. Dorgan and John J. Dowdy in McKinsey Quarterly When IT lifts productivity (2004, Number 4). Dorgan and Dowdy have written before about the value of good management. This time they looked at manufacturing companies investing in information technology and found significantly better performance in those companies who ranked high on a management practices scale.
From the abstract: Many economists have long argued that good management, rather than more computing power, is the key to higher productivity. A new study of 100 manufacturing companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France shows that IT expenditures have little impact on productivity unless they are accompanied by improved management practices.
Duh... Necessary but Not Sufficient (Unfortunately, the McKinsey articles that Jack points to have disappeared behind the paid subscription wall.)
Don't Stop Thinking About the Value -- "CIOs know that project implementation success rates are woefully low. So once a project comes in on time and under budget, CIOs think they've won the battle and can move on. Wrong."
Models and Truth -- Referring to a William James quote on truth being something that happens to and idea...
"This definition of truth, using correctness over time, is similar to a definition that uses the predictiveness of a model to define it's usefulness. A model, like truth, is tested and refined over time. It is always open to change as it is compared to more data from events."
"...as we back away from our organizations and as business evolves, our vision of the territory broadens. Our frame expands from the individual worker (e.g., the clerk) to the team (e.g., accounts receivable) to the department (e.g., finance) to the business unit (e.g., light-bulb manufacturing) to the corporation (e.g., General Electric). As we back away, we see that the functional silos of finance, marketing, sales, personnel, etc., are all part of one big operation. We see raw materials going in one door and finished goods coming out the other, with everyone touching it along the way, a process of adding value we call workflow.
"Business Process Reengineering sought to tighten things up at this level. BPR claims to make end-to-end improvements. BPR often failed. On the one hand, BPR oversimplified how organizations really work; you can’t do without the grapevine, workarounds, the shadow organization, social networks, and other intangibles. On the other, BPR mistook the old wall surrounding the corporation for the limits of the value creation process. The wall is an artificial barrier. That’s why Jack Welch told GE to be a “boundaryless organization.” Why mess with only the inside stuff when you can leverage the assets of the entire world?
"As we backed away, a bigger picture came into focus, a “Value Chain.” We recognized that our organization is but a link in a chain that stretches from digging raw materials out of the ground to putting a smile on a customer’s face. The chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If the company that supplies our raw materials is an inefficient, high-cost producer, our customer is eventually going to pay for it. Hence, it’s in our interest to select, train, inform, and motivate every link in our chain. A majority of the people who work for Cisco don’t draw a Cisco paycheck. They are suppliers, assemblers, shippers, channel partners, consultants, and integrators."
Mind Hacks -- "This exploration into the moment-by-moment works of the brain uses cognitive neuroscience to present experiments, tricks, and tips related to vision, motor skills, attention, cognition, subliminal perception. Each 'hack' examines specific operations of the brain. By seeing how the brain responds, you'll learn more about how the brain is put together."
"Einstein and Freud did not revolutionize intellectual history by interpreting evidence as good scientists are supposed to. To start, they barely glanced at the evidence. They discovered their astonishing new truths by running thought experiments and introspecting."
DigitalGrit -- The new website of my day-to-day...visually striking, IMHO. Refresh the home page a few times to get the full effect. We got a blog, as well.
"Can you imagine a group of people composing music in an hierarchical chain of command: a chief composer, with middle-manager-composers, and squads of junior composers? 'Sorry boss, we tried to make the eighth-note triplets work like your plan, but the rhythm's off.' The boss replies: 'You gotta make them work. We have a schedule, and the base line needs to be integrated with your part by the end of this week -- and we don't have time to do it over.'"
Later...While I was putting this together over the new year's weekend, David Weinberger passed along a music joke that talks to not just quantity of output but quality...
Joe: Can you imagine? Bach had to write a cantata every week!
Tim: Not only that. He had to write a Bach cantata.
Who says you can't have both quantity and quality? Of course, one of the more well known is called the "Coffee Cantata." Maybe a paen to that potent potion than might have helped?
"You are running a 6-person project team, and you'd like to get an estimate of something or other of monumental importance to your work. Use your network (ever so relatively easy to do in WebWorld), and dig up 5 disparate experts or interesting folks in general, reward them with a dinner for their trouble, and ask them to work solo and send you their Best Guess in 24 hours; you, in turn, process their answers-estimates...Just don't gather them in a conference room, real or virtual, and ask for a "consensus view"!"
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