Actually…

One of the least productive attitudes human beings can betray is a rejection of failure. Failure certainly doesn’t feel good and it draws criticism from your peers, however being that it is at least as common as success, we all have bouts of it. Unfortunately, this aversion to failure robs us of one of the [...]

In a recent post I suggested that emphasizing metrics over ones mission will result in at best a loss of productivity and at worse working against that expressed mission.
A recent article in the Washington Post illustrates this problem perfectly. Few feel the USPTO is doing a good job and one of the main reasons is [...]

I have a love-hate relationship with metrics. In chemistry, it was rare when I didn’t care about measurements. Likewise in engineering measurements are equally important as they tell you whether or not you are building what you intend. So too in business, metrics are critically important in identifying whether your plan or vision are being [...]

I feel like a loser linking to articles mentioned on Slashdot, but this one on CIO about failing projects is a good one.
Several of the points in the article I mentioned myself.

I used to call the following my rules of engineering, but I have found that they generally apply across entire businesses.
I. Never have one person perform two actions in a process.
When responsible for performing two or more steps in a process people will frequently not do one or more of those steps. The steps [...]

It isn’t like I haven’t spent three hours trying to scram out an interesting post. I’ve got two abortive posts sitting on deck waiting for the sound-minded Landon to finish them.
In the meantime, check out this interview I read with Tim Lister (yes, it was on Slashdot) about project management. Most of the ideas mentioned [...]

If you have ever worked on a project, chances are you have worked on a failed project. This may come as a surprise to many of you as groups, particularly in larger companies, can have a “declare victory and go home” method of coping with failed projects.
There are classic ways of identifying failed projects; over [...]

I have been struggling to develop an article on office politics as it plays so large in how companies, particularly larger ones, do business. I was motivated to write the article when recently describe by both a report and my spouse as a raging political animal. I think I am creating a productive and open [...]

The US Congress intended Sarbanes Oxley to force greater openness in the financial records of publicly traded companies. As mentioned before Sarbanes Oxley was created to prevent accounting scandals like that which occurred with Enron.
Yet numerous reports indicate that the act itself is driving companies toward privatization, and compelling private companies to not go [...]

Thirty-four years ago Princeton psychologists John Darley and Daniel Batson conducted a study on seminary students. The test was simple. The students had to give talk on the other side of campus. But the test wasn’t on their talk, it was whether they would stop and help a scruffy moaning doubled-over man in the alley [...]