Quote of the Week

Think of today as a prototype, what would you change?

Tim Brown, author of "Change by Design" and CEO of IEDO in a linked-in article called "Start Designing your Life"

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121121191930-10842349-start-designing-your-life?trk=mp-details-rc

Quote of the Week

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987), The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

 

 

Source:  http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/change/

 

Quote of the Week

When you're finished changing, you're finished.

- Benjamin Franklin

It's a small world

At work today, a fellow PM explained that a client had taken her idea and made it his own.  She learned about an issue, listened to two sides (Client and third-party vendor) and led the client to a third option.  The client discovered this third option, made it her own, and proposed it.  Issue resolved.  Client takes full credit.  PM gets the best possible outcome - she is the grease that make the project succeed.

Well done fellow PM!

Moneyball Part 2: Big Change

In part one, I voiced three questions.  Let's take a whack at one:

"when someone has a (possibly) great idea for a new way of operating, how does the organization decide to make the change?"


Big organizations are harder to change than small ones.  When you think about Monyball - the organization is really not that big.  In my years working in and around IT projects, I've learned that to make a big change - go small.  Ways to achieve this:


1.  Start a skunk works - in this strategy you carve out a small part of the big organization and change in isolation from the general organizational culture.  Note that a risk here is that the skunk work is a success, but the larger organization rejects the improvements.  "Yeah, I can see how that would work for a 20 person group, but it will never scale to our 700 person organization.


2.  Persuade executive management - here you sell the change at the top and try to enforce.  This is very risky because executives may have short attention spans and may agree without really buying in. In some organizations, top level sponsorship is not enough.  If you go this way - first check to see that the executives have a small number of change initiatives going on at any one time.  Too many change projects is an indication that the organization is churning and not really changing at all.


3.  Plant the idea and let it grown - I've seen visionary leaders succeed in big change by leading their teams to an idea and then encouraging the workers to implement the change.  This works best when the workers own the idea (that is, when the workers have the light bulb moment and then act upon it).  If such a change is really going to work, the growth is by word of mouth among the do-bees in the organization.  The leadership role here is to recognize and reward teams for forward thinking and innovation.  In my opinion, this is really the only way to effect big change in a large mature organization.


4.  Make it a start up.  Let's face it, big organizations struggle with big change.  If your idea is really worthy, consider making it a new startup where you can own and control the project.

Movie - Money Ball - Part 1

I went to see the movie Moneyball at the $2 a ticket Sun Theater in Grand Ledge last week.  iMDB tells me that Moneyball is “The story of Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane's successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players.” But to me, it is a story about managing projects.  Big, meaningful, risky projects.

Jonah Hill plays an quiet understated (really) Yale trained economist who sells Billy (Brad Pitt) on the idea that there are 25 undervalued players that can win a championship within Oakland’s relatively small budget.  It is an interesting concept and takes all of 30 seconds to understand.  The silver thread here is the interactions between General Manager Billy and his clubhouse manager, scouts, and over a hundred years of baseball tradition.

Yes, this one is all about change, risks associated with change, and change management,  

So, question one is - when someone has a (possibly) great idea for a new way of operating, how does the organization decide to make the change?

Related to question one - the second question is how do you score or price the risk of a radical change (this is a bet the business change).

Finally, upon deciding to make the change, how do you sell that decision to all the stakeholders?  

In my next few posts, I’ll chat about those questions.

Alan