The business world is showing an increasing interest in the people side of change, and there is a very real reason for this… Companies are spending an increasing amount of their budget on technology and working to transform their operations to be more digital in order to provide a better experience for customers, employees, partners and suppliers while simultaneously creating ...

This past weekend, after finally completing the book I’ve been working on for more than 2 years (The Moral of the Story), I was looking forward to relaxing a bit with the family. However, it didn’t take long before thoughts of all the things still on my plate for the weeks ahead began causing anxiety. In addition to the typical ...

The Apollo 11 moon landing and conquering the moon was, as many American textbooks imply, our 20th-century Manifest Destiny. To those working on Apollo 11 in 1969, the moon landing was much different.

Organizational complexity and bureaucracy are a threat that managers must continually be wary of… The term change fatigue is a real and common problem that organizations face and must deal with when considering a change or transformation initiative, or even a simple process improvement initiative. But at its source is the manager. The late Peter Drucker once said, “Much of ...

Consumer anthropology offers such refreshing insights into the marketplace, re-humanizing the relationship between people, things and stores in very profound and moving ways. This movement also has helped stores get their noses out of spreadsheet and theories and keep their eye on the customer experience. Whether in-store or online, this ethnographic sensitivity has positively been leveraged to optimize the present ...

Are there times that product managers need to be disobedient – not do what they were asked to do? If such a situation arose, would the product manager be insubordinate or practicing a form of innovation? After all, the people that product managers report to make mistakes – they can’t always be right. But, to willfully practice disobedience? It could ...

When people talk about innovation, many of the conversations gravitate towards the creation or invention of new products or markets. Fewer conversations focus on how innovation occurs in the context of professional services that deliver project or program outcomes for clients. In examining the typical life cycle of professional services projects, there appear to be at least three fatal flaws that limit ...

Which is the superior approach to project management, Waterfall or Agile? After talking with an expert on project management, I learned that’s not the right question. Instead, we should ask, “Which tool is best for this project?” It might be Agile, Waterfall, a customized combination of both tools, or something else. Further, Waterfall and Agile and just specific forms of ...

The worlds of employment and business are becoming increasingly turbulent as the stability of the enterprise grows ever shorter, the loyalty of the enterprise to its people faces extinction, and the wealthy countries of the world stand at a precipice of overhanging debt. Increasingly intelligent digital technologies and mercurial customer expectations threaten both people and enterprise at every turn.

Which is the superior approach to project management, Waterfall or Agile? After talking with an expert on project management, I learned that’s not the right question. Instead, we should ask...