I figure it can’t hurt to throw out another simple list type post. Sometimes it helps to think things through in simple terms. 1. Figure out what the final product will look like before you start. It may seem like overly simple advice, but I’ve started more than a few projects without knowing where I…
Telling the story versus doing the work.
I remember the first time that I was taught the power of stories in business. A vendor salesperson had come in to help us better understand their product and how we could use it. He started his time with us, not by opening up the tool and showing us examples. Instead, he had us close…
4 questions to determine if you are being productive.
Anyone who has a job that has changing tasks and responsibilities on a regular basis is likely familiar with the internal question of “am I being productive.” It’s not that we don’t know what needs to get done, it’s just that some tasks may not be aligned with our internal sense of what is productive….
Best practices are certainly worth striving for, but they don’t really exist.
Best practices is one of those great buzzwords that is really hard for people to object to. No one is going to object to striving for best practices. They may object to certain individual practices being proposed but not the idea. This is the thing about buzzwords – defining them in a hard way is devilishly…
The secret behind 90 day transition windows
In many industries (definitely across CRE), you will find yourself needing to transition something. It may be an outsource provider, moving from one vendor to another, implementing a technology system or simply testing a new tool. If you are talking to a third party to assist you, you will likely come across the generic 90…
Retail is not dying, it is simply changing.
There are many doom and gloom articles about the pending death of retail. It’s a vastly overstated premise. Much like how Apple and Android disrupted Nokia and Blackberry in the mobile phone industry, Amazon and other e-commerce companies are disrupting traditional brick and mortar retailers. This does not mean that retail is dying, but it…
Technology should influence your internal processes but it should never dictate what you must do.
There is a lot of technology in this world that tries to get you to do things its way. You know the systems – the ones that talk about how you don’t need to customize or configure them and in 90 days you’ll achieve millions in operational savings. Let’s call them “Miracle Systems.” Miracle Systems…
Don’t forget steps 1 through 3.
When working on something you feel comfortable with, it can be easy to look into the future at what you expect the final outcome to be. If you are simply trying to get through the process as quickly as possible it can be easy to just jump straight to what you think the final answer…
Process drives Technology drives Controls drives Process
So much of the work that we all do is recursive. When you do Thing A, it causes you to do Action B. Action B dictates that you generate Report C which indicates that you need to do Thing A differently. The trick to the entire process is to realize the truth in the above…
Say what you mean, mean what you say, follow through.
It sounds simple. It’s hard. Getting it right is important.