Synopsis: Feedback to staff is a critical tool management can use to shape corporate culture
This year's Lego Movie spawned the song that has turned into something of an Internet meme. Likely to be 2014's most cheerful tune, the "Everything is Awesome" song tells us that we shouldn't worry about the negatives in life, instead we should focus on the positives. While that happy-go-lucky message lifts spirits and is fun, from a business perspective the song's message is something of a trap that...
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Retrospectives
Don’t just jump, leap
Lesson learned: Maximizing project throughput.
Category: Resource management / Portfolio management.
The following post is a "Lesson Learned" that comes from the analysis of the failed projects documented in the "Catalogue of Catastrophe" or from the experiences the editorial team have had working with clients around the world. The post is published here to spark discussion and help individuals and organizations think about what it takes to improve project success rates.
Given the rap...
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Cheese and Onion – Frameworks for Analyzing Project Failure
When it comes to improving success rates, the commercial aviation sector has been one of the most successful. In 1930 taking a commercial flight was risky business. When you board a flight today, the chances of an accident taking your life is about 1 in 30 million. Through rigorous accident investigations and a willingness to challenge every facet of the problem, the industry has continually improved its safety record.
Sadly, success rates for the projects in today's businesses are far worse ...
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Rickety Retrospectives
Lesson learned: Seek out root-causes of project failures, not just surface symptoms.
Category: Retrospectives / Organizational learning
The following post is a “Lesson Learned” that comes from the analysis of the failed projects documented in the “Catalogue of Catastrophe” or from the experiences the editorial team have had working with clients around the world. The post is published here to spark discussion and help individuals and organizations think about what it takes to improve project ...
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The Cycle of Failure
After the firefights subside and a troubled project finally draws to a close, many organizations hold an inquiry into what went wrong. In theory retrospectives help identify root causes so that subsequent projects can avoid repeating the same mistakes. In practice, despite the reviews, many organizations find they lurch from one troubled project and onto the next.
In many cases this failure to learn can be traced to the narrow perspective from which reviews are usually done. More often than ...
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