Collaboration
A $1 Million Research Bargain for Netflix, and Maybe a Model for Others – NYTimes.com.
For those of us managing teams of technical engineers, this provides excellent insights into team dynamics. Worth a read.
Executing strategy using project-based work (PBW) involves varying levels and degrees of organization change. A recent IBM report on Making Change Work offers insights from an on-going IBM study on change. All of these are key elements of our Strategic Execution Framework (SEF) that serves as the foundation for the Stanford Advanced Project Management Program.
Even though just 41 percent of projects were described as successful, those with the highest project success rate (the top 20 percent of our sample) – we call them Change Masters – reported an 80 percent project success rate, nearly double that average. In sharp contrast, the bottom 20 percent of our sample – the group we describe as Change Novices – reported a disappointing project success rate of 8 percent. What accounts for these vastly different rates of project success? We found in our detailed analysis of study results that achieving project success does not hinge primarily on technology – instead, success depends largely on people. But what is more illuminating is the discovery that four common factors helped these practitioners address their greatest project challenges. When used in combination, these factors provided a synergistic benefit that was even greater than the sum of their individual impacts, resulting in higher rates of project success
Neglecting even one area can inhibit change excellence. Practical insights from the experience of Change Masters show that the most powerful approach is to take actions that address each of the diamond’s four facets and help guide the Enterprise of the Future in its quest to make change work.
I add this tag line to all me emails and wanted to share with a wonderful set of web sites around GREAT WORK. I first read about this from Michael Bungay Stanier, a wonderful, creative coach, speaker, and consultant. The tag on his web site is : “Do Less Good Work. Do More Great Work.”
Leaders of initiatives, teams, projects, and other groups continually face helping their teams aspire to Great Work. Michael’s work is insightful and provides a ranges of tools, movies, templates, that can be applied immediately.
His recent blog post on sources of inspiration and possibilities is spot on for these times. Here he explains how Great Work differs from Good Work:
“Here’s my litmus test. Great Work brings with it both exhilaration and terror. You’re delighted when someone asks you what you do. You tap into reserves of courage and chutzpah to get done what needs to be done. You often have no idea how to do what needs to be done, and are only a little fazed by that (check out Peter Block’s latest, The Answer to How Is Yes). It is a place of inspiration, where suddenly all your past makes sense (”a-ha! That’s why I did that, learned that, experienced that”). It is a place that honors your skills, your passion and your experience.
With Good Work, there is no shame attached. You’re doing work that uses your skills, it gets stuff done, it may well pay you a wage. It’s not that you’re having a bad time. It’s just that when you’re asked at parties what you do, sometimes it feels like you’re trying to convince yourself that this is great. And in a year’s time, you probably can’t remember what it was you were doing a year ago.
And as for Bad Work, this is when you sit and ask yourself: why exactly am I wasting my life with this?”