What is a Project?
Projects: A plan or proposal; an undertaking requiring concerted effort. Jost, David, Ed., The American Heritage College Dictionary, 3rd Edition, Houghton Mifflin, 1993.
It’s All About Project Work
According to Tom Peters: “All white collar work is project work.”[i] The project life puts a person in the middle or outer ring of Charles Handy/Hutchins work model. Stephen Covey and other work gurus put it bluntly: “Your job description may change from day to day; in fact, your ‘job’ may be simply a series …
Selling Skills to the Highest Bidder
According to the Handy work model, an organization’s middle ring is composed of Brand U portfolio or project people who have specific skills the organization needs for special projects. In this model, the middle ring Brand U’s have a bundle of skills that can be sold to the highest bidder, much like engineers, writers, architects …
CEO’s – Endangered Species
More boards of directors want Brand U leaders who can transform and galvanize their organizations. Such companies as AT&T, Eastman Kodak, and IBM had a rock-hard principle of promoting from within. All CEO’s had to be imbued with the corporate culture. They knew the industry, processes, and products. Companies would hire in their own image. …
Only Internet Companies
In five years’ time, all companies will be Internet companies, or they won’t be companies at all. Andy Grove, Chairman of Intel
It’s All in the Mind
“When you get right down to it, the real work of Silicon Valley occurs in the mind – the minds of workers sitting in their cubicles, staring at screens, pondering their challenges. That’s where innovation occurs.” Po Bronson, The Nudist on the Late Shift, NY: Random House, p. xxxiv.
Flow of Progress
Progress flows only from struggle. Louis Brandeis, US Justice
Transformation Change
Transformational change attempts to reinvent, reorganize and if necessary eliminate non value-adding processes rather than simply retooling existing processes. The goal: redesigned, end-to-end processes that are logical, value-adding, seamless, balanced, and customer driven. Hence: the value-chain. Transformational change forces an organization to look at itself objectively, examining each process step that adds or detracts value. …
State of Work
Reorganization is the permanent condition of a vigorous organization. Roy Ash
Process Orientation
A process orientation involves these interrelated factors: Structure. A core process is smooth, balanced, structured, seamless, value adding, replicable, efficient, effective, and economic. The process has a beginning and an end. It consists of a number of value-adding steps, each of which has a customer and a supplier. A process step may involve working with …