SuccessfulWorkplace

How do you improve the whole organization, not just parts of it? The über challenge for process improvement in organizations has always been to successfully make improvements across functions. But have any sizable organizations assigned people to manage their major end-to-end processes — and actually been successful? I got this question from a process leader at […]

Every day we hear about investors chasing the new, shiny innovations that can add to the top line, but what about that other line — the bottom line? With little fanfare, a new kind of disruption has been picking up steam — disruption in the cost of production. Uber and AirBnB are powerful examples of […]

Is your job safe? Are there things you can do to ensure the future? Maybe there’s a completely different way to view the new economy and your role in it. The workplace is fundamentally changing from the Industrial Age system of large factories offering many jobs to one where smaller companies, sometimes drastically smaller, sell […]

The following is a guest post by Tim DeWitt. In the late 1990’s, early 2000’s, the book Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life was a popular motivational book by Spencer Johnson. It addressed the issue of experiencing change in one’s work and life […]

Yesterday, Microsoft shook up its leadership team with changes that kept the same people but in new roles. Some of the most significant changes were around the flagship Windows development team and Cloud, in both cases putting people in place that argued for better integration of products and the need to prepare for a post-PC/Cloud […]

Change has always been one of the most important wheels driving the IT industry. IT product vendors, systems integrators, technology vendors, a plethora of consulting service providers –- all partner with customers to engineer, deliver and enable change in some form or the other. At the same time, even as they facilitate change directly or […]

In a recent blog called Digital Disruption I talked about the issues that established companies have from start-ups unencumbered by assets, infrastructure and thinking that locks them in and prevents them from innovating. The ability to look at the current world through fresh eyes and identify the opportunities would seem to be perfect. Now is […]

While we marvel about technology we can easily forget how disruptive it is for many people. Baby boomers are supposedly between 49 and 67 years old and spent some to most of their careers pre-Internet, pre-cell phone, pre-social, -cloud and -mobile…certainly pre-user-friendly analytics and big data. In many cases, we have a population still able […]

We live in a time of disruption. The average lifespan of a corporation is dropping fast, and technology and culture are changing at a remarkable rate. We can see disruption as a negative force, or we can see it the way a classically trained fighter pilot sees it — as an advantage. Fighter pilots have […]

It is easy to think we’re the first to live in such disruptive times. Not even close to true. I recently visited a Civil War battlefield and had a great conversation with one of the reenactment actors who happened to be a history buff. In our twenty minute conversation, he told me two remarkable, very […]

Sometimes you read something that is so provocative that you go sleep thinking about and even wake with it in your head. For me, it was Jon Evans, writing in Tech Crunch, making the statement America Has Hit “Peak Jobs”. Evans believes the gulf between the haves and have nots will increase and that the […]

It’s funny how no matter how much times change, many things stay the same…or quickly return to established norms. Marketing has gone through a significant revolution over the past ten years as the Web matured and then social media arrived. But just as before our interconnected days, has settled into a groove of ‘safe’ targets […]

Just kidding, but I got your attention. Also, full disclosure, I’m from Texas. You may have seen the recent news story on the use of RFID student badges (not implanted microchips) in a school district in San Antonio, Texas. You can read a summary here. Enter Financial Pressures The main driver behind the school district […]

I remember the amazement I experienced the first time I saw Google’s autocomplete in action. With this small feature, Google revolutionized knowledge management. No longer did users have the hit-or-miss experience of having to enter multiple searches to figure out the best term. Google provided real time feedback on the the most commonly grouped terms. […]