The management guru's in one day!

The management guru's in one day!

At this moment I am in the train, returning from a seminar based on management theories. Filled with ambition and renewed energy to guide te business through these times, I am tired and asking myself what it was that I learned most today?

Most of us know a lot of the stuff that was presented, Mintzberg, Porter, Goldratt, golden oldies that you have learned during your college and university years. But how different does the message arrive when you have been managing your own company for some years in comparison to the times that your biggest worry was which bar to visit that evening..

For me the word Focus rings through most at the moment. As the most valuable confrontation of today. Yes, confrontation, because be honest, the main message is: "you have learned this almost 14 years ago, why don't you act like it?". 

Focus!

- focus on what you are as a company,

- focus on what your clients need your company for,

- focus on the skills at hand to do that what is aimed for and required.

And using a lot of techniques to mold those focusses together in one proposition.

A nice day, a fun day, not a dull moment, guidance for me as the entrepreneur who is to guide.. It was another great day in business!

Doede van Haperen

www.lakran.com

www.postulit.com

When to optimize?!

When to optimize?!

...and when just automate?

The other day I was involved in a conference call with a client of mine. Plans involving P2P related steps in SAP. So we where called in to think along based on our experience and known creativity. Torn between current business wishes to make things more simple and future policies to come to more extensive integrations, the IT department had to come up with an idea. But waiting for the future, the budget was limited, and being pushed by the business, the time to solution was limited as well...

That made me think, when do you advice on optimizing, when do you advice on just automating and when do you decide to not advice at all and do as asked?

Is there simple ruling for this dilemma? I think there is, and it is one of the simplest rules in the project book, but a lot of IT guys (and girls too, really) tend to forget it: keep on focussing on the business case!

1. Keep asking you client/internal business "why"?

2. Keep calculating on the result, do we gain by this idea in money, and if not, is that covered by qualitative motivators for the solution?

3. Be careful the moment a project just becomes qualitatively motivated. These are the projects that usually derail on cost!

4. And an important one which is more difficult to assess: is it worth the fuzz?

In P2P related projects the quantitative business case is often huge on price reduction, and slim on process improvement. But still, when playing it right, this second category can cover a complete project by itself. When you focus on the part that is enough, in my experience you get the correct focus. Eliminating unneccessary fuzz, building a lean project and covering your business needs. From there on start using and start optimizing.

So when to advice what? Drop your own boxed thoughts and listen to your client, do not do for the doing, but do for the goal!

Doede van Haperen

www.lakran.com

www.postulit.com

Confronting

Confronting

Maintaining a weblog was fun I thought, a nice channel to express your experiences and let the world have an idea of what you are busy with. But it appears to be also very confronting: it tells you when you are (behaving yourselve?) too busy! Before you know it, about two weeks have passed. And again, what a few weeks those were...

Potential clients asking for a lot of attention, current clients reaching project deadlines, employees are taking their spring-vacation, discussions on internal product development and on top of that you try to execute some billable hours yourselve at important projects.
All keeping you up late, keeping you busy during the day and keeping the "up-time" at more and more stressful levels...

Yesterday we had a bank holiday in The Netherlands (we got a new King and Queen!), I was at a celebration where one of my friends, entrepreneur as well, kept on checking his iPhone to see what his abroad susidiaries where doing. As a person, you tend to take over that habit imediately, so I was handling mine pretty soon... Fortunately I ran into the attached picture-perfect-moment that same evening: a staring contest with a pigeon in my garden, that seemed to tell me "just enjoy this sunset now...".

...Pigeons are wise, able to confront me the same way my Blogger-account does. For the rest of the week, my time is vacation time! Taking the down-time to compensate for the rushes of up-time required at the moment, reading a book and doing some study, playing with my daughter and...who knows, run into some pigeons again;-)

Doede van Haperen
www.lakran.com
www.postulit.com