Today’s work is complicated with electronic and mechanical subsystems wrapped in cocoons of software; coordination of matrixed teams; shared resources serving multiple projects; providing world class services in seventeen languages on four continents. And the complexity isn’t limited to high level elements. There is a living layer of complexity growing......
People ask why. People buy products from people. The right people turn activity into progress. People want to make a difference, and they do. People have biases which bring a richer understanding. People use judgement – that’s why robots don’t run projects. People recognize when the rules don’t apply and......
How a company allocates its resources defines its strategy. But it’s tricky business to allocate resources in a way that makes the most of the existing products, services and business models yet accomplishes what’s needed to create the future. To strike the right balance, and before any decisions on specific......
When it’s time for new work, the best and smartest get in a small room to figure out what to do. The process is pretty simple: define a new destination, and, to know when they journey is over, define what it looks like to live there. Define the idealized future......
Is it disruptive? Is it innovative? Two meaningless questions. Two questions to stop asking. More strongly, stop using the words “disruptive” and “innovative” altogether. Strike them from your vocabulary and replace them with novel, useful, and successful. Argument is unskillful but analysis is skillful. And what’s needed for analysis is......
At the most basic level, business is about allocating resources to the best projects and executing those projects well. Said another way, business is about deciding what to work on and then working effectively. But how to go about deciding what to work on? Here is a cascade of questions......
I don’t believe the role of Chief Innovation Officer has a place in today’s organizations. Today, it should be about doing the right new work to create value. That work, I believe, should be done within the organization as a whole or within dedicated teams within the organization. That work,......
In strategic planning there’s a strong forcing function that causes the organization to converge on a singular, company-wide approach. While this convergence can be helpful, when it’s force is absolute it stifles new ideas. The result is an operating plan that incrementally improves on last year’s work at the expense......
Whether you’re a country, company, organization, or team, revolution is your mortal enemy. And that’s why the systems of established organization are designed to prevent impending revolutions and squish those that grow legs. And that’s why revolutions are few and far between. (This is bad news for revolutionary innovation and......
Shipulski On Design
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The Shipulski On Design
