Book Review: Crucial Conversations

Another good self development book. The book touches upon many aspects of conversation that if mastered can immensely improve outcome of any dialogue. The book expands upon the concept of "responsibility = ability to respond" from 7 habits. It contains many useful tips that can be adopted in day to day conversations. Especially in a Leadership role where one potentially comes across such non trivial situations frequently.

Hello Again

Haven't written for a while. Hope to get back into it. In the wonderful world of projects often people loose sight of objectives that were precursor to the very existence of the project. Objectives can be brought to life by adding them to status reports and other formal documents that are frequently distributed by the project.

Management Vs Strategic Management

I often wonder if there is a difference between management and strategic management. I think, there is a subtle difference between the two. Whilst both aim to improve an organization's performance. Strategic management aims to align the organization on a carefully chosen path. If successful, this path yields better than expected performance. Else, results in doomsday.

Quotable Quotes: "I am deaf to the word NO"

Another famous quotes from Dhirubhai Ambani. Something that personally moved me. If words can change your life than these are the words that are capable of changing one's life.

Following the power of simple words, Dhirubhai raised his profile in business circles. Every time he was told that he could not do something, he took it as a personal challenge and set himself to achieve that very thing.

Quotable Quotes: " I don't believe in meeting timelines, I believe in beating the timelines."

I first came across this quote whilst casually reading about Dhirubhai Ambani. One man who made a fortune like no else within one life span. An amazing story of rise of a man from rags to riches. Anyways, I draw a lot of strength from this quote in my day to day life. I like the fact the there are people out there who like to continuously challenge status quo and are on a continuous improvement path.

I think the biggest thing to learn from something like that is never to compare oneself with others. But set high standards for yourself and aim to improve on your own standard year on year.

Management control system

In the 1995 HBR article "Control in the age of empowerment" - Simons argues that management control systems are broadly classified into 4 categories and all these categories need to work in work to ensure organization's growth. These categories are Belief systems, Boundary Systems, Diagnostic systems and Interactive systems.

Belief systems explain organizational values. For example, integrity, customer service etc. One implementation of belief system is where upon joining a company an employee is given training on organizational values and failing to hold those values will result in dire consequences.

Boundary Systems explains organizational boundary. For example, not dealing with money laundering etc. Essentially, these systems cover what an organization would not do. This ensures that such message has been explained to everyone in the organization and people are expected to behave accordingly. One example is Enron where boundary systems collapsed miserly. In the movie "The smartest guys in the room" - it was explained that Enron wanted to make money at any cost. Hence, people were behaving in irrational manner such as bringing California power grid down in the middle of the day resulting in many people being stuck in lifts etc.

Diagnostic systems are essentially the performance management systems and more metric driven. These systems help track how organization is tracking on its set objectives. Balanced Scorecard, management dashboard are all example of diagnostic systems.

Interactive systems are concerned with ongoing improvement i.e. ensuring that strategy remains relevant in continuously changing world.

Book Review: One Page Project Manager

Though the title suggests that the topic of book is overall project management. However, this book is mainly about building a project status report that is presented on a one page and has all the project information i.e. scope, time, cost, resources etc.

This book provides interesting and novel concept for project communication management. I think if not for anyone else, this kind of report can help me get a handle on the projects easily.

The only restriction I have from using the books concept with large audience is that audience may not find this format easily palpable. Hence, may add training burden on the project.