Gary Klein’s 2013 book “Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights” is a good read, as I’ve found with his his other books. He likes to explore a topic from stories and search for corroborating links to draw together new conclusions. And as this book is about insight, the overall story of this book describes his journey of discovery as he delved into the topic. I particularly liked his discussion of the challenges that organizations face in gaining and using insights.
Systems thinking guides us to step back and look at the system. What created the environment in which the error occurred? Even beyond “errors”, what makes the system operate in some way that we find objectionable? What is the system that we are describing? What do we WANT from the system? Then we can dive in and look for understanding behind what is creating the undesirable results. It is incredibly rare that the root cause can be placed at the foot of an individual. It’s the system.
Mark Graban has written a great book on statistics, Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More. He focuses on Process Behavior Charts that help highlight the natural variability of a process and can really show when there has been a change in the underlying system. He does a nice job (for me) of simplifying the concepts and the underlying reasoning. He’s even put the math at the back of the book, in favor of providing clear reasoning and project flow.
I recently read a pair of books that talk about project management shifting into product management - both of which seem to blame the woes of organizations on project management. One is Mik Kersten’s Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework, and the other is more of a work-in-process book (and free) #noprojects: A Culture of Continuous Value by Evan Leybourn and Shane Hastie.
Overall, these books present some interesting ideas on how to think of delivering value - whether it is in a project environment or not. And they present a few frustrations for me in that I don’t think the core problem is due to “projects.” I think it is deeper embedded into organizations that are so fractured that the flow of value has been lost. Lets get that righted, and project management AND product management work much better.
Red and green language: language that is full of judgement and ambiguity or language that is clear and descriptive. John Tompkins focuses his Not Crazy Yet? Then … Start Talking to Yourself Differently on these topics as they have to do with how a person talks to themselves. But there are some elements here that point to being clearer in talking to one another as well.
HBR this month has a great article on Too Many Projects by Rose Hollister and Michael D. Watkins. The essence of the article is that organizations have far too many projects, initiatives, efforts underway. And that they struggle to STOP that work - or not start it to begin with.
The latest DevOps Enterprise Summit (DOES) wrapped up last week in Las Vegas. Amongst the videos and tweets and blog posts that have come out of the event was a quick interview with Gene Kim on the Agile Amped podcast with Greg Bledsoe of SolutionsIQ.
This is a great list of the Internet-era ways of working from Tom Loosemore and public digital on what they mean by work in the era of the internet. I love coda to this list - “break any of these rules sooner than do anything barbaric.” There are also a number of items in here that make me step back and pause to check about my own assumptions.
My review of Kevin Kohl’s Addicted to Hopium - Throughput: Using the DVA Business Process to Break the Guesswork Habit. The book is a fictionalization of the long history that Kohls has had in bringing Theory of Constraints and related approached to GM and other organizations. Kohls gives us the story of MegaCo and engineer Andrew Wright and their journey from barely being able to keep their heads above water to applying a strategic approach to improvement, thanks to the impetus of a guru in the form of a possible customer.
Another piece on dealing with collaborators and personal relationships from Adam Kahane in Strategy+Business, this time “There’s No Such Thing as Difficult People.” His suggestions revolve around the idea that whenever I am upset or angry or in a pique, it is me that is upset. What is it about me that is causing that scenario? How can I “wear the world as a loose garment?”
In essence, this book is about taking the Lean Startup concepts and applying them much more broadly - inside companies, non-profits, governments, and or even a lemonade stand. Most of the ideas and proposals in the book make a lot of sense, and it is useful for me to have them collected in this fashion.
I came across this quote from Ernest Mueller in doing some reading on DevOps, and it stopped me in my tracks. “Automation is the exercise of power.”
Soon: An Overdue History of Procrastination isn't a book about how to "fix" procrastination. Rather it is a review of the different ways people have thought about it over time, as well as Santella’s own challenges with procrastination. There are many takes on the topic that made for a good, fairly quick read.
Beyond the Goal is a great encapsulation of the TOC ideas and concepts. Eli Goldratt summarizes the previous 20 years (and more) of thinking and many of the topics in this audio book continued to be developed beyond this publication.
“When Your Team’s Path Forward Isn’t Clear, Carve It” by Adam Kahane takes the idea of “carving” a solution through its paces. I like this way of framing the approach, even if the blog post doesn’t provide specifics (leave that for his book).
Gene Kim and John Willis recorded a set of conversations called Beyond the Phoenix Project to talk about the DevOps movement since the publication of The Phoenix Project. (It’s available as an audio and a transcription.) I very much appreciate that the thinking behind DevOps has been geared around learning and applying concepts and ideas from all of these areas. I'm sure there are cargo-cultists who simply try to mimic what they see other people doing, but the people who are developing and growing in DevOps are clearly those who are looking at the giants that have come before them, climbing up on their shoulders, doing something new that is relevant to their current view of the world, and then sharing that back with the community to test and refine and develop further. I got a strong sense of excitement and desire to learn from this.
Clarke Ching has created a new book to try to help people understand what is blocking their work (or life?). The Bottleneck Rules: How to Get More Done (When Working Harder isn't Working) is a quick read and got me thinking more about how I talk about this topic with people.
Going into a long weekend in the United States, I came across John Rampton's list of 20 time management tips, Manipulate Time With These Powerful 20 Time Management Tips at Forbes. Many of them sound familiar, but they are good reminders nonetheless. To me, it is primarily about focus-and-finish.
My long-time blogging friend, Jim McGee, will be teaching a course on project management and has some thoughts on how to enhance the course this time around. His main question in Design projects before worrying about managing them is "We would do a better job at managing projects if we spent more time designing them first"?
There's a nice video from Goldratt Consulting Brazil on a Betânia Lácteos case study. They are a dairy facing some pretty familiar challenges in supplying their market while dealing with variability in demand and supply. "If it doesn't rain, the cows don't give milk."