Showing posts with label Scorecard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scorecard. Show all posts

February 29, 2020

A Jewish Scorecard: Trump vs. Sanders

Please see my new article in The Times of Israel called "A Jewish Scorecard: Trump vs. Sanders."

In nine months, we will go to the polls again to elect the next President of the United States. Right now, it's looking like it will be Donald J. Trump versus Bernie Sanders. What is the scorecard of these two men when it comes to the State of Israel⁠—the Jewish homeland that we have returned to after 2,000 years of exile, persecution, and deep yearning, and where the majority of the world's Jewish people currently reside?

In the end, no candidate is perfect, and each has their own critical flaws. However, you, as the voters will need to tally the score for yourselves and decide who will be President in 2020 and what that means for this country as well as for the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

(Photo: Adapted from Flickr post by The White House (Public Domain) and Linda Sarsour's Twitter account profile picture)

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March 2, 2018

Project Manager - The DIRECT(or)

So I learned this cool acronym for the roles of a project manager:

DIRECT

The project manager directs the project (similar to a director who is the project manager of a movie).

Here is how the project manager DIRECTs the project:

Define - Identify the opportunity or issue that the project will address including, the vision, scope, resources, and measures of success. (i.e. the "Charter").

Investigate - Explore options and pros/cons for each (i.e. an "Analysis of Alternatives").

Resolve - Solve and resolve (i.e. commit to) the course of action that will be pursued (i.e. "Project Plan").

Execute -Do the project and track/manage cost, schedule, scope, quality, risks, and actions items (i.e. "Scorecard").

Change - Identify process and technology techniology changes, test these, fix outstanding items, and make the cutover (i.e. "User Acceptance Testing," "Punch List," and "Go Live Plan").

Transition - Migrate people to the new solution, communicate the changes, overcome resistance, and conclude the project (i.e. "Communications Plan" and "Lessons Learned").

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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November 12, 2017

Potty Mouth Award

So I had to laugh when I saw this Potty Mouth "work of art" award. 

And it had a real potty in it too!

It reminded me of some foul-mouthed, but fun-spirited colleagues who actually used to keep a scorecard in the office with tick marks for each occurrence of cursing by person.

Let's just say that there were some clear winners on this account.

In many cases, they did it as a vent for all the frustration at work and also because they thought it was funny. 

I remember my dad who was very religious and he used to say jokingly and with a big smile:
"Don't use that f*ckin language with me!"

Growing up as a Jewish kid even from the Bronx, it was never really an issue for us.

Although even I have to admit that sometimes hearing someone get really angry and spewing off like that--while not appropriate, it does let you know where their head is at--at least for that moment in potty time.  ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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August 4, 2016

America's Great Disappointment


So the Wall Street Journal asks today,"Why [Is] This Recovery Is So Lousy"?

They say that with Obama, "No president was ever better positioned to lead a strong recovery...no resources were spared...yet not once in the last seven years has annual economic growth ever reached [even] 3%."

But the news gets worse, in fact, "U.S. GDP grew a disappointing 1.2% in the second quarter...[and] economic growth is now tracking at a 1% rate in 2016...that makes for an average annual 2.1% rate since the end of the recession."

And that is after Obama's $836 billion stimulus and $3 trillion in Federal reserves injected into the economy!

The Great Recession may be the most disastrous economic results short of the Great Depression itself.

However, this is not the only reason Americas are disappointed with what they are getting from Washington (and we won't even talk about the candidates).

80% say we are heading in the wrong direction!  Let's repeat that again, 80% say we are heading in the wrong direction.

Harvard Business Review says it's not just the economy stupid, since we still [despite ourselves--with failing policies of enormous tax and spend and over-regulation] rank #5 on GDP per capita. 

Yet that doesn't translate into overall social progress for us.

Get this, the U.S. ranks 19th in social progress in the world--just one place above Slovena!

Why???

- We rank 26th on personal rights because of restrictions on freedoms like the right of assembly. 

- We rank 27th on personal safety because of high homicides and poor road safety.

- We rank 36th on environmental quality because of high greenhouse gases and poor water quality.

- We rank 40th on basic knowledge because of poor education and high dropout rates.

- We rank 68th on health and wellness because of suicides, obesity, cancer, and heart disease.

HBR points out that there may be individual reasons for each of these, but overall this is a bleak "troubling picture" and Trump isn't the one who painted it.

The sad fact is that one of the only things that the U.S. is ranking #1 in the world in is our national debt to everyone else...and this is being squandered. 

Think good and hard about the nation you are leaving your children and grandchildren...this is a horrible performance scorecard for America, the superpower!  ;-)

(Source of the amazing photo: Minna Blumenthal)
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November 18, 2012

When All Is Not Green




Are their programs successful or not, is everything okay on their staff, will they--without fudging the numbers--meet their performance goals and targets (if they have any), and so on. 

People are afraid if they made a mistake or something isn't working as intended that they will be in trouble.  

Maybe they will be yelled at, lose authority and power, be sidelined, demoted, or even fired; and their organizations may be downsized, outsourced, consolidated with another, or outright eliminated. 

So people hide the facts and the truth--as if, what they don't know, can't harm me.

So everything appears copasetic in organization-land!

But the truth is we need a solid guidepost to know where we are going, which paths are safe, and which are fraught with danger--and that is anchored in open and honest communication. 

There is a great story about this in Bloomberg BusinessWeek (15 November 2012) about how in 2006, when ex-Boeing executive, Alan Mulally took over as CEO of Ford--and Ford was bleeding red ink, facing their largest loss for automobiles in history of $17 billion, that at the executive Thursday morning meetings, the performance scorecard for their initiatives "was a sea of green."

Here the company is bordering on financial collapse, but the executives are reporting--all clear!

The story goes that Mark Fields, head of Ford's North American business stepped up and showed the first red revealing a problem with a problem tailgate latch on their new Edge SVU that would halt production. 

With the room filled with tension, Alan Mulally rather than get mad and castigate or punish the executive, what did he do--he clapped!

Mulally said: "Great visibility. Is there anything we can do to help you?"

And what ultimately happened to Mark Fields, the executive who told the truth about problems in his area of responsibility?  

Last month, "Ford's board elevated him to chief operating officer," which analysts read as a sign that he will be the next CEO when Mulally is supposed to retire at the end of 2014.

The bottom line is that we cannot fix problems if we can't identify them and face up to them with our people. 

While we need good data and sound analysis to identify problems in the organization, problems will remain illusive without the trust, candor, and teamwork to ultimately come to terms with them and solve them.

I love this story about Ford and think it is a model for us in leadership, communication, and performance management. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

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February 3, 2011

Leading With Business Intelligence

Check out this great video on Mobile Business Intelligence (BI) put out by MicroStrategy (Note: this is not an endorsement of any particular vendor or product).

Watch the user fly through touchscreen tables, charts, graphs, maps, and more on an iPhone and iPad-- Can it really be this easy?

This fits in with my firm belief that we've got to use business analytics, dashboarding, and everything "information visualization" (when done in a user-centric way) to drive better decision-making.

This is also ultimately a big part of what knowledge management is all about--we turn data into actionable insight!

What is so cool about this Mobile BI is that you can now access scorecards, data mining, slicing and dicing (Online Analytical Processing--OLAP), alerting, and reporting all from a smartphone or tablet.

This integrates with Google maps, and is being used by major organizations such as U.S. Postal Service and eBay.

Running a business, I would want this type of capability...wouldn't you?

As Federal Judge John E. Jones said: "What gets measured get's done, what gets measured and fed back gets done well, and what gets rewarded, gets repeated."

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December 16, 2009

Project Failure, Why People Can’t Own Up

I saw this funny/sad Dilbert cartoon on project management by Scott Adams (BTW, he’s terrific!).

It goes like this:

Office colleague (water cooler talk): How’s your project coming along?

Dilbert: It’s a steaming pile of failure. It’s like fifteen drunken monkeys with a jigsaw puzzle.

New scene….

Boss: How’s your project coming along?

Dilbert: Fine.

END

This common work scenario is sort of like a game of truth or dare: you either have to tell the project truth or take the dare and do something embarrassing like proceed with the project that isn’t on track.

Teammates, colleagues, peers often talk frankly and honestly about the problems with their projects and often the talk may become sarcastic or even somewhat cynical, because they know that they can’t tell their bosses what is REALLY going on.

What a shame in terms of lost opportunities to communicate, solve problems, and drive project success for the organization.

People are afraid to be honest, direct, tell the truth, and work together with their management on constructive solutions.

Instead, people simply say everything is fine, period.

Sort of like when your boss asks politely at work how are you doing? And rather than say, well I woke up late, missed my train, spilled coffee on my tie, and am having trouble meeting my deadlines this week, the person almost always replies, reflexively, “I’m fine” and “How are you?”

Another manifestation of the it’s fine syndrome is with executive dashboards or project scorecard reviews where virtually all the metrics show up as “green”, even when you know they are not—does yellow or red sound too scary to have to put on paper/screen and explain to the boss.

We are conditioned NOT to talk casually or to report to our superiors about issues, problems, or anything that can be perceived as negative, least they be labeled as trouble-makers or “the problem,” rather than the solution. Ultimately, employees don’t want to be blamed for the failures, so they would rather hide the truth then own up to the project issues, and work constructively with their management on solutions or course correction—before it’s too late.

Now isn’t that a novel idea? Management and staff working together, actually identifying the issues—proactively and in forthright manner—and working together to resolve them, rather than sitting across the table, sugar-coating or pointing the accusatory finger.

People have to take responsibility and own up when there is a problem and be willing to talk about them with their management, and management needs to encourage frankness, a “no surprises” culture, and a team-collaborative environment to solving problems rather than instilling fear in their employees or implicitly or explicitly communicating that they only want to hear “good news.”

Good news is not good news when it’s fabricated, a distortion, or a complete sham.

A culture of teamwork, collaboration, honesty, and integrity is the underpinning of project success. If everything in the project “is fine”, it’s probably not.


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