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.
The Two Reasons People Say No -- From Seth's Blog...
"It's been done before" "It's never been done before"
Even though neither one is truthful, accurate or useful, you need to be prepared for both.
Slick (as one comes to expect fro Seth Godin), but a little simplistic, since there's also "We don't need to do that." (Layer 1 of resistance), and "That won't solve our problem." (Layers 2, 3), "But if we do that, we'll have a problem with..." (Layer 4) and "We could never make it happen." (Layers 5, 6)
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"A soon to be disastrous energy policy based on raising chicken and beef prices to sell more ethanol, coupled with Rest of World demand for all metals, will make it so we will not get good inflation numbers."
We'll be able to drive to the grocery store...just won't be able to afford anything there.
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Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Lessons Unlearned -- Derry Simmel asks a good question about "lessons learned": Why don’t we learn from them?. He puts forth two possible reasons...
1) We think the lessons don't apply to us, and 2) We want to get things done.
We may learn, but the trick is putting the learning into practice by changing processes and procedures...and following those processes and procedures.
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Karma Korrection -- I just realized why the idea of priority conflict avoidance as a cause of multi-tasking came to me so easily yesterday.
In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.
"I was surprised by how easily people were distracted and how long it took them to get back to the task," said Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft research scientist and co-author, with Shamsi Iqbal of the University of Illinois, of a paper on the study that will be presented next month
....from the New York Times.
But then with all the evidence, why do we persist in it? It's probably all about the inability to set priorities which is in turn based in the desire to avoid conflicts about those priorities.
In an effort to keep everyone happy, everyone suffers.
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While "supply chain" usually refers to the flow of goods and materials in and out of manufacturing facilities, distribution centers and retail stores, de Weck said that a well-designed interplanetary supply chain would operate on much the same principles, with certain complicating factors. Transportation delays could be significant--as much as six to nine months in the case of Mars--and shipping capacity will be very limited. This will require mission planners to make difficult trade-offs between competing demands for different types of supplies.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting on a conference call, like so many mornings, listening to a senior executive address her glassy-eyed direct reports.
She gave us the state of her particular union, complete with visions of a glorious future full of happy shareholders, delighted customers and employees who wouldn't really miss those co-workers who'd just been right-sized.
But she sounded completely inspired when she started on the new blockbuster movie "300", about how 300 Spartans held out against impossible odds – citing it as proof of what a few dedicated people could do when they really tried.
This, I suppose, was to let us know that they didn't really need their "bloated" staff and if properly motivated, their teams would perform just like those Spartans.
What she actually managed to do was to get me to clean out my sinus cavities with coffee as I choked and spat it out my nose...
Eight Components of Enjoyment 1. Confronting tasks that we have a chance of completing. 2. Concentration. 3. Concentration is possible because the task has clear goals. 4. Task provides immediate feedback. 5. A deep, effortless involvement removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. 6. Enjoyable experiences allow one to exercise a sense of control over one’s actions. 7. Concern for self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. 8. Sense of time is altered - hours pass by in minutes.
It's about focus/concentration on a reasonable task, preferably in the form of a series of sub-tasks that provide a sense of accomplishment along the way.
Something New: Focused Performance 2.0 -- A new social network. Taking the Focused Performance Blog and, hopefully, the Critical Chain Yahoo Group boldly into Web 2.0, via Ning.
Strategic Prioritization -- A comment from Glen in a recent post on prioritization triggered some of my memory cells, resulting in recall of a few older posts and essays addressing the subject of the role of strategy in portfolio management (including the old chestnut of a graphic included below), "enterprise PM", and the pain of making the "first cut."
"Don’t try to squeeze in one more phone call or one more game of Minesweeper before departing for your meeting — better to leave early and arrive on-time with a relaxed frame of mind. Then, you can play Minesweeper on your Palm Pilot while you wait for all the late people to arrive."
The latter part of this tip helps address the problem that when one is punctual, there's usually no one there to appreciate it.
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