Ilya, I hope your work at LHS bears fruit soon so that you can get back to writing regularly.
Your last couple of paragraphs are contradictory: cut projects which don't show promise AND support with all one's clout the work that truly needs to be done. With hindsight, knowing which path to take is simple as you beautifully illustrated with the God Father example. Clearly there is no silver-bullet decision tree to follow in the early days. The deciding factors are myriad and nuanced. I have been called to the carpet for defending contentious projects as surely as I have upset colleagues by challenging projects which I don't perceive as adding positive value. Valiantly cutting or defending a corporate initiative can be highly uncomfortable, even career limiting. I tend to base my decisions on cold logic and hard research but I know I need to be more politically aware with such decisions. What advice do you have for determining fight or flight?
Discussion on:
View:
Show:
Your praise is very generous. Incidentally, I am running a session on decision making in a couple of weeks, this time customized to healthcare.
You may recall this little anecdote (perhaps apocryphal) about the CFO questioning the VP of R&D about the success rate of new products' prototypes. "Cannot you just work only on those few products that will be successful a cancel projects that will flop?!"
It goes without saying that it is not immediately clear what will work and what will not. Our judgement gets better as we learn about our craft and we learn to make better selection decisions, but ultimately, in new product development, a lot is left to luck, whim and precise alignement of the stars. There are so many ways in which The Godfather might have failed. The story is really an illustration on how success is not really evident from the start. This is summed up in the penultimate paragraph.
What I am talking about in the paragraph that is third from the end is the poor portfolio management, which stems from the lack of strategic focus. When the strategy is not constantly reviewed, challenged and corrected at the C-level, the portfolio of projects also just goes on, whether all of the projects are relevant or not. Then, we find that we need to tighten our belts and so instead of just adjusting the portfolio by canceling what's no longer relevant and investing in what is, budgets are just uniformly cut. This is criminal. Alternatively, power struggles ensue and those who have the ear of the ultimate decision maker, win. All of this because there is no framework for such decisions, so passions take over.
It does not have to be this way and there are concrete steps to take to avoid the unfortunate effects you are describing. The first step is for the top level to be on the same page in respect to the main course of the ship. When that is in place, somehow it usually becomes clear what sails to deploy to propel the ship in the intended direction.
This is a vast topic, feel free to reach offline.
You may recall this little anecdote (perhaps apocryphal) about the CFO questioning the VP of R&D about the success rate of new products' prototypes. "Cannot you just work only on those few products that will be successful a cancel projects that will flop?!"
It goes without saying that it is not immediately clear what will work and what will not. Our judgement gets better as we learn about our craft and we learn to make better selection decisions, but ultimately, in new product development, a lot is left to luck, whim and precise alignement of the stars. There are so many ways in which The Godfather might have failed. The story is really an illustration on how success is not really evident from the start. This is summed up in the penultimate paragraph.
What I am talking about in the paragraph that is third from the end is the poor portfolio management, which stems from the lack of strategic focus. When the strategy is not constantly reviewed, challenged and corrected at the C-level, the portfolio of projects also just goes on, whether all of the projects are relevant or not. Then, we find that we need to tighten our belts and so instead of just adjusting the portfolio by canceling what's no longer relevant and investing in what is, budgets are just uniformly cut. This is criminal. Alternatively, power struggles ensue and those who have the ear of the ultimate decision maker, win. All of this because there is no framework for such decisions, so passions take over.
It does not have to be this way and there are concrete steps to take to avoid the unfortunate effects you are describing. The first step is for the top level to be on the same page in respect to the main course of the ship. When that is in place, somehow it usually becomes clear what sails to deploy to propel the ship in the intended direction.
This is a vast topic, feel free to reach offline.
I see a general breakdown in management and marketing. Axing Leo good. Axing Touchpad, controversial. Axing WebOS, bad(I mean sure they own some licenses, but they sent most of the developers packing, that will make them relevant for about 3 more months). We'll see how bad Leo was for HP mid-November. For what it's worth, Dell is acting pretty cocky already.
- Keyboard Shortcuts:
- Prev
- Next
- Toggle
