Innovating For the Numerator

The National Academy of Engineering identified fourteen “Grand Challenges for Engineering” that must be addressed in order to achieve a sustainable, economically robust, and politically stable future. (see the full list here) The challenges are a call-to-action for solutions to some of the most pressing issues in the 21st century: identifying safe and clean energy resources; providing for human health, nutrition and security; restoring and reinventing infrastructure for urban habitation; advancing computing power and capabilities; and developing new tools for teaching, learning, medicine and scientific discovery.

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Ten Mobile BI Strategy Questions: System Integration

More and more mobile devices are becoming connected with the software that runs on them. But the true value of mobility can’t be realized until these devices take advantage of the necessary integration among the underlying systems. The same principles hold true for mobile business intelligence (BI). Therefore, when you’re developing a mobile BI strategy, you need to capitalize on opportunities for system integration that can enhance your end product. Typically, system integration in mobile BI can be categorized into three options.

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Quality Takes Time

“We live in a world of speed and cheapness,” says Roger W. Smith, who makes every component of a watch from scratch and by his own hand. It is the ultimate opposite of that other Smith (Adam)’s division and specialization of labor. I believe there is room for both in our world. It takes one watchmaker about 6 months to produce one watch. The result is a masterpiece…

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The ROI of Follow-Up

Making time to review earlier proposals and decisions is hard… very hard. But it’s still one of the best time investments a leader can make.

When operating budgets are squeezed, we usually cut the training budget first. It’s an easy target because there is little visible, immediate impact. When time is squeezed, we usually cut follow-up reviews. Follow-up is an easy target because we tell ourselves we’ll get back to those reviews… when there’s time. So, when will that be? And how much might delay cost?

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The 6 Steps of the Blue Ocean Strategy from a Process Perspective

The Blue Ocean Strategy is highly related to process innovation. The idea of this strategy is to build new businesses where none existed before. So-called Blue Ocean industries are more profitable than traditional business fields with head-to-head competitors. In the Blue Ocean strategy, you must offer your customers a value innovation (i.e. tangible product or service advancements) accompanied by demonstrable savings. To be able to do that, you have to look at your process innovation from a new perspective. Let’s revisit the six steps of the Blue Ocean strategy from a process point-of-view.

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Lean vs. Business Process Management – This Means War!

If it doesn´t make three people angry it isn’t a process!! [Michael Hammer]

If Lean and Business Process Management work together, instead of fighting, then it is actually possible to link strategy to operations. Personally, I am more than convinced about the fact that Business Process Management must lead the way – and Lean should adapt! However, the Lean evangelist probably won´t agree…!

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Riddle: How is Finance Like a Magic Act?

Magic is a very technical profession - you’ve got to learn all that sleight of hand stuff and it’s got to be very accurate. It attracts geeks who enjoy that sort of thing who practice by themselves for hours on end, often in their bedroom from a young age. Polishing the act to get it just right.

Yet to be a big success you’ve got to learn strong people skills. How to engage an audience, how to draw them into your story, how to entertain them, not just show off how clever you are at the magic.

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Metrics: Too Many Different Ways of Keeping Score

You’ve likely played an organized sport at some time in your life - How many different ways were there to keep score? How many different ways were there to determine the winner? Just one – right? It was goals, or runs, or points, or something, but never goals and/or assists, or some weird combination of runs, hits, errors, average, ERA, RBI’s and on-base percentage.

Now, ask the same question about your business – how many ways do you have of keeping score, of determining if you’ve “won” (i.e. met your key strategic objective)?

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