Thursday, January 31, 2008
Lessons from the New England Patriots (1)
Following are some of those lessons:
1. Emphasizes that a collaborative system of schemes and mismatches prevail over talent
In a grand setting, the origin of the New England Patriots success is due to one thing- a collaboration of many people that are behind closed doors. Whether it is recruiting new players or out-strategizing their opponent during gametime, they usually target their strengths against the opposition weaknesses with strategic timing.
2. Emphasizes detailed preparation from start to finish
Belichick and his staff collaboratively delineated a specific goal and a set of specific objectives. Then they plan on how to achieve it. (The basics of Tangible Vision) ... In terms of organization development, the Patriots has made the most of the salary cap, free agency era. ... Before gametime, Belichick usually prepares his players on many possible scenarios. They always know what are the possible moves and when to adjust strategically. Proper Preparation Prevents Pissed Poor Performance.
3. Understands the cycles relating to one's settings
During gametime, Belichick recognized two things: the current scenario and the next possible event. He also knows when and how to take advantage of a tired opposition. This is how a consummate strategist has the "big picture" view.
In terms of players management, New England Patriots always know when to "retire" their players one season before, then one season later. ...
4. Be professional
When one is a champion, trash-talking is not the norm.
5. Emphasizes loyalty
The Patriots believe in loyalty from start to finish.
6. Recruits personnel who are multi-skilled, smart and move fast
The Patriots have many players who play multi-positions like Troy Brown, Randy Moss, Adalius Thomas, Wes Welker and others. It gives the coaches more strategic options.
7. Success breeds success
New England has a successful record and three Super Bowl . While talented players like Moss, Welker and Thomas always want to join a winner. ... With mountains of successes, Belichick convinces formerly egotistical players put aside their personal ambitions for the greater good of the team.
8. Always be secretive (never trust outsiders)
Outsiders has a way of disrupting team unity. Ask Belichick and Moss about outside distractions.
9. Always learn from the best
"... In addition, Belichick is a devoted student of the game; during the offseason, he has spent significant amounts of time visiting with other programs to learn from their experiences. For example, he has studied the Navy run offense, sought Bill Walsh (in past years) to understand more about the San Francisco 49ers as an organization and the West Coast offense as a system,[14] and spent time with Jimmy Johnson to learn about drafting and contract negotiations.[15] ..."
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Belichick
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Belichick is also a student of Sun Tzu's Art of War. "With genius coach Bill Belichick systemically crafting game plans and victory marches straight from the teachings of Sun Tzu, the Patriots - who scored an NFL-record 589 points and posted the largest point differential (315) in a season - do appear to be one of the greatest NFL teams of all time. That's not hyperbole; that's fact. ..."
- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/29/SPUDUNPV8.DTL
More conceptual details on Point #2 to #8 can be found in Sun Tzu's (Sun zi) Art of War.
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Patriot Way' needs good citizens - even Moss
Nancy Gay, San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, January 31, 2008
(01-31) 04:00 PST Phoenix --
They're quick to cite the "Patriot Way" in New England as the reason for three Super Bowl championships and six division titles in the 21st century. It's a catchphrase that would seem overly pretentious if it weren't for a trophy case full of hardware to back up the notion.
Then there is the unprecedented 18-0 record that stands to remain unblemished Sunday if the Patriots complete the anticipated season sweep and defeat the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII.
The textbook Patriots player, as defined by owner Robert Kraft, coach Bill Belichick and vice president of player personnel Scott Pioli, is hard working, dependable, accountable for his actions. He must have good character. You don't see a Jerramy Stevens on the Patriots roster.
There is an occasional blip - safety Rodney Harrison, for example, served an NFL-imposed four-game suspension at the beginning of the season after admitting he had obtained human growth hormone. The safety is among the team's most respected leaders.
Rather than blame the bust on a tainted supplement, a popular line of defense for such embarrassing infractions, Harrison held himself accountable by publicly apologizing for being a poor role model.
During Super Bowl week, he has expanded on his contrition. "My message to young kids basically was, 'Hey, you make a mistake, own up to it, accept your consequences and move forward.' We, as people, have to do that," Harrison said. "I mean, we all have skeletons in our closet. No one's perfect here. The way you make amends is by becoming a better person."
This is the type of player the Patriots covet. They are not perfect. But they try.
Pioli, the media-shy architect of so many of the team's brilliant personnel moves, made himself available the past two days and the question of how New England built an 18-0 team via the Patriot Way was at the forefront.
"We know what we're looking for in terms of, there is a certain type of person that Bill wants to coach, and that wants to be coached by Bill," Pioli said. "Ultimately, it comes down to the players being able to do that.
"Bill is looking for people who are professionals, people who are just like him ... getting people who care about football. When we talk about finding disciplined football players, it has nothing to do with how long their hair is or how much jewelry they're wearing.
"It has everything do with how disciplined they are about their job and being committed. Showing up on time, paying attention, working hard and being accountable to people that you work with."
How does New England get it right every year and other teams - oh, say, the two in the Bay Area - tend to make one expensive mistake after another and fail?
"You know there are a lot of different vehicles to build a team. There is the draft, free agency, it's the waiver system, it's trades," Pioli explained, as if this were really simple stuff. "You try to build a team using all the vehicles available to you."
Here's how he spent the 2007 offseason: After losing the AFC Championship Game to the Colts last January, the Patriots signed top free agents such as linebacker Adalius Thomas, tight end Kyle Brady and wide receiver Donte Stallworth. They swung trades to acquire wide receivers Randy Moss and Wes Welker.
You figure that Welker, a hard worker who evolved from an undrafted Dolphins' free agent into one of the NFL's most versatile receiver/returners, was a no-brainer fit for the Patriot Way.
But Moss? That sullen guy who appeared to mail it in for two seasons with the Raiders?
"We know a lot of people (who) spent time with Randy, we know a lot of people (who) played with Randy, who coached Randy. We know Randy and we were comfortable bringing him here," said Pioli. People in the Raiders organization told him that Moss still had his legs and still could run. "Perception and reality sometimes are two completely different things."
Here in Super Bowl land, several NFL insiders have confirmed that Raiders owner Al Davis has made it known across the league that he believes coach Lane Kiffin forced his hand on that trade, a steal for a fourth-round pick ultimately used on a bench-warming defensive back, John Bowie.
Here is how Pioli describes the transaction, which took place at the conclusion of Day 1 of the draft. And Davis - regardless of how much he might regret dumping Moss - was directly involved.
"It was quick. The conversations with Mr. Davis didn't start taking place until (late) ... because of the time difference. It was late," Pioli recalled. "It was at the end of the first day of the draft. It went late into the night. It went very late (and) early into the (next) morning. We spoke to Mr. Davis and got to the parameters of what we thought (that) the trade would be, but there were other things that we had to discuss.
"Part was getting together with Randy, part was to talk about his contract because he was due to make $9.75 million this year. There were a number of things that had to get done. The process was (that) again we spoke to the Raiders. Randy was, I believe, somewhere in Texas. He got on a plane, flew up in the middle of the night. (He) got in early in the morning, took a physical and met with Bill and I. (And) then we consummated the trade."
Pioli, Belichick and Kraft convinced Moss to play for them for $2.5 million in base salary, a $500,000 signing bonus and promises of other riches (about $2 million more) if he made the Pro Bowl and the Pats made the postseason.
No problem.
Moss, who caught an NFL-record 23 touchdown passes, is now celebrated for being the perfect teammate and model employee.
"In his case," Kraft said, "he came to us and wanted to be part of a team that could win and he said to me, 'Mr. Kraft, I have made a lot of money, more money probably than I need. This is about winning.' "
Moss made $15 million in two seasons in Oakland, but apparently it wasn't all about the cash. After getting hurt in the fifth game of the 2005 season and then rotting from lack of use under the bed-and-breakfast offense designed by former offensive coordinator Tom Walsh and head coach Art Shell, Moss' will was destroyed. Ask Jerry Porter about that.
On Wednesday, Moss said it's his hope that he and the Pats can come up with a deal once his one-year contract expires Feb. 29.
"Hopefully, we can work something out after this season is over. The sky is the limit," Moss said. "I really don't know if I'm going to be a New England Patriot, but to answer your question, I would love to retire a Patriot, yes."
Said Kraft: "He's lived up to every commitment that he has made, and he also treats people very well in the organization. Everything that I've seen, he has conducted himself very well."
It's the Patriot Way. Randy Moss bought into it. Thrived under it.
The rest of the NFL, chasing a franchise that has a lock on consistency this decade, can only hope to do the same.
E-mail Nancy Gay at ngay@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/31/SPPVUOV6R.DTL
This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
More profile information on Bill Belichek
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/who-is-bill-belichick/
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Does your planning process encompasses all of these specifics? If not, you need Compass AE.
If you are interested in learning more about Compass AE, please e-mail us at contactus [at]collaboration360[dott] com. [ Replace [at] with "@" and [dot] with "." ]
fyi- We also have an abridged version of the Tangible Vision that describes "The Patriot Way".
Saturday, January 26, 2008
The Strategist as a Fisherman (3)
The Way of the Ultra Strategist:
He creates the opportunities that lures their targets in, via transforming ordinary events into something extraordinary.
What is the Approach of the Ultra Strategist?
The strategist views the big picture. He builds his plan by assessing ideas, positioning events and choosing the best people to complete the goal. The key is the use of the Tangible Vision as his compass.
Do you have a strategic process that enables your team to perform the above?
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Fishing, Nation and Attracting Talents-Six Teachings
(Tai Gong Six Teachings-Civil Teaching Chapter 1)
King Wen said:" I would like to hear about these greater principles."
Tai Gong said:" When the source is deep, water flows endlessly. When the water flows endlessly, fish spawn there. This is nature. When the roots of the trees are deep, the tree is tall. When the tree is tall, fruits are produced. This is nature. When men of true worth have views in common, they will come together. When they are drawn together, accomplishments can be achieved. This is nature. Speech and response are merely adornment of inner emotions. Speaking about the truth is the best. What I am about to say is all the truth without adornment, will you find it abhorrent?"
King Wen said:" Only a man of true benevolence can accept corrections and remonstrance. What makes you think I will be? Please continue."
Tai Gong continued:" When the fishing line is thin and the bait is glittering, only small fish will bite. When the line is thicker and bait is fragrant, medium sized fish will bite. When the line is thick and the bait is generous, large fish will bite. When the fish take the bait, they will be caught on the line. When men take salary, they will submit to their ruler. When you catch with bait, the fish can be killed. When you give remuneration, men can be made to exhaust their capabilities for you. If you regard families, as the basic foundation of state, the state is yours. If you use the state as your base to conquer the kingdom, you can conquer the kingdom."
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Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Determining The Tangibility of a Goal
When developing goals and objectives, most people focus on the positives, rarely on the negatives. The reason behind this train of logic is that some people consider negativity is bad for morale. In most cases, that is not tangible.
When a team collaboratively understands the positives and the negatives of their venture, they can determine whether their project is tangible. This grand point enables them to connect with it as a team. This state of team unification enables the team to plan their operation effectively.
Collaboration360 believes in that concept. With Compass AE, a project team determines the tangibility of their intent.
They begin by defining their outcome first. Then transferring the specifics in terms of the priorities, the approaches, positive circumstances and negative circumstances.
Defining the circumstances is a part of our collaborative process of determining what parts of their goal and objectives is tangible.
Does your project process enables your team to achieve that?
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Weakness at Yahoo Doesn't Bode Well for Google
Until a couple days ago, Google's stock looked recession proof. Despite mounting talk of an advertising slowdown, shares hit an all-time high in November. Now, it finally seems that recession concerns are catching up with the web giant.
Although Google and Yahoo are in different competitive positions (Google could eat Yahoo for a mid-afternoon snack), they are both dependent on advertising for the majority of their income, and as a result, both are poised to take a thunderous hit in the event of a recession.
The key difference between Yahoo and Google is that nobody has high expectations of Yahoo. Its problems have been widely chronicled: Former CEO Terry Semel was sacked last spring; its search business is troubled; and now Yahoo is reportedly planning layoffs to keep its finances in check.
On the other hand, investors and customers alike expect great things of Google. The tight-lipped, overachieving company is notoriously uncommunicative with the financial community, but its silence is usually interpreted to mean that business is growing at mind-blowing rates. Over the last two years, Google's earnings handily exceeded analysts' expectations in six of the eight quarters. Now, with a looming recession and nervousness surrounding the online advertising market, at least a couple analysts think that Yahoo's woes are not unique to the company and could drag on Google, too.
"Advertising is linked to the economic cycle, and the market has come to the conclusion that Google will not be immune to a recession," says Laura Martin, an analyst with Soleil - Media Metrics. "I think what's going to happen is [on the earnings conference call,] somebody will ask about the outlook, and I would expect [Google management] to be conservative. And the market is not going to like that."
The market may already be anticipating the bad news: Over the last two days, Google shares have dropped more than $58, closing at $548.62 on Tuesday. How long before the stock drops below $500? At this rate, it'll be a day or two.
Photo: Flickr/Thomas Hawk
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Connect to Collaborate in a Global Economy
One problem with distance collaboration is getting the trust of your remotely located team
Collaboration360 Consultants believes that the best way to create team trust is to have the members collaboratively build a plan together. If they collaboratively believes in the plan and each other, the team will connect to it. This connection enables them to collaboratively lead with it from start to finish.
Through our Compass AE process, the team learns to collaboratively build and connect with their Tangible Vision. When they lead with their Tangible Vision, they collaborate regardless of the distance, the technology and the project culture.
[sidebar]
Q: What is the Tangible Vision?
A: The Tangible Vision is a goal, a plan that a Compass AE project team collaborates through. It also emphasizes a clearly-defined vision or mission statement that a team believes in.
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How Email Brings You Closer to the Guy in the Next Cubicle
By Tim Harford 01.18.08 | 6:00 PM
As a columnist (which is fancy for "journalist in jammies"), I ought to personify th conventional wisdom that distance is dead: All I need to get my work done is a place to perch and a Wi-Fi signal. But if that's true, why do I still live in London, the second-most expensive city in the world?
If distance really didn't matter, rents in places like London, New York, Bangalore, and Shanghai would be converging with those in Hitchcock County, Nebraska (population 2,926 and falling). Yet, as far as we can tell through the noise of the real estate bust, they aren't. Wharton real estate professor Joseph Gyourko talks instead of "superstar cities," which have become the equivalent of luxury goods — highly coveted and ultra-expensive. If geography has died, nobody bothered to tell Hitchcock County.
Maybe it's because society hasn't wholeheartedly accepted the idea of working remotely. Or perhaps communications technology just isn't all it's hyped up to be. After all, the journalists and consultants who tell us that location is insignificant are biased. Like me, they're the people whose lives have been most transformed by the Internet and cell phones.
But I think the truth is more profound than either of those glib explanations: Technology makes it more fun and more profitable to live and work close to the people who matter most to your life and work. Harvard economist Ed Glaeser, an expert on city economies, argues that communications technology and face-to-face interactions are complements like salt and pepper, rather than substitutes like butter and margarine. Paradoxically, your cell phone, email, and Facebook networks are making it more attractive to meet people in the flesh.
The most obvious example is online dating. With sites like BBW (Big Beautiful Women) Datefinder and Senior People Meet, it's a lot easier to find like-minded flames. But that's not much use unless you live within driving range of your 98 percent-compatible love connection. The kind of contact that follows online winking is far from virtual.
It follows that matchmaking is most effective in densely populated areas, where there are plenty of fish but an awfully big sea. If you live in Los Angeles, online dating is the killer app. If you live in a small town, you've likely already met all your potential mates at church or a bar.
Of course, the rest of life isn't like courting. Or is it? In big cities, our communication tools are especially helpful because they keep us from getting lost in the crowd (which is not something you worry about in a one-street town). There are even services that tell you where your friends are by locating their cell signals.
New technologies can strengthen ties within your business, too. A 2007 study by economists Neil Gandal, Charles King, and Marshall Van Alstyne looked at the networks formed by 125,000 email messages from the staff of an executive-recruiting firm. It found that email's real value isn't in communicating with Kuala Lumpur but with Betsy in the next cubicle. The most productive workers have the densest intracompany email web.
This shouldn't surprise us. Email makes it quicker and easier to reach your colleagues — you don't have to interrupt them, and messages are easy to process. But email doesn't stop you from wanting facetime, too. Just the opposite: By enabling us to maintain productive business relationships with more people, it encourages more face-to-face contact. Have you noticed business travel dying out? Neither have I. Air travel is at record highs.
One day, perhaps, virtual communication will become so good we'll no longer feel the need to shake hands with a new collaborator or brainstorm in the same room. But for now, the world seems to be changing in a way that actually demands more meetings. Business is more innovative, and its processes more complex. That demands tacit knowledge, collaboration, and trust — all things that seem to follow best from person-to-person meetings. "Ideas are more important than ever," Glaeser says, "and the most important ideas are communicated face-to-face."
/// Compass AE process enables a team to build trust while building a project plan.
Which explains why the highest-tech industries are the most dependent on geography. In a study published in the American Economic Review, researchers examined 4,000 US-based commercial innovations and found that more than half came from just three areas: California, New York/New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Almost half of all US pharmaceutical innovations were invented in New Jersey, a state with less than 3 percent of the nation's population.
In theory, technology should allow new-economy firms to prosper as easily in Nebraska as in Silicon Valley. But far from killing distance, it has made proximity matter more than ever.
/// With the Compass AE process, the project team collaborates without borders. Distance, technology and project culture becomes irrelevant.
As for me, I've been finishing off this essay between a coffee date with my wife and some essential chitchat with my publishers at a central London restaurant. This old city isn't cheap, and it isn't easy. But with my cell phone and laptop to back me up, I can't afford to live anywhere else.
Tim Harford (undercovereconomist@gmail.com) is the author of The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World.
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/magazine/16-02/st_essay###
If you want your team to collaborate without borders, please email us at contact us at contactus [tat]collaboration360[dott] com . [ Replace [tat] with "@" and [dot] with "." ]
Monday, January 21, 2008
Competing in the Global Economy (Innovation with a Tangible Vision creates Profits)
During the initial building and connecting of the Tangible Vision, the Compass team assesses whether an innovation can match the defined outcome. In most cases, high risk innovation means high rewards.
Before deciding on the "Gold Standard" for their Tangible Vision, the team determines whether the high risk and the high level of complexity creates high rewards.
Through our Compass AE process, the project team comprehends the connections between the goal and the specific objectives. This understanding creates a sense of predictability and efficiency that enables the team to be on time, on budget and on target.
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The New York Times
January 20, 2008
Ping
The Risk of Innovation: Will Anyone Embrace It?
By G. PASCAL ZACHARY
THE Prius has become one of the hottest cars in America an amazing development, because this hybrid-electric car requires some rather large changes in how people behave.
I learned the need for Prius-style adaptation early this month, when I rented a Prius from Budget Rent A Car in Seattle. Much to my embarrassment, I couldn’t get it to go forward. Once I got going and arrived at my destination, I couldn’t figure out how to put it in reverse.
Fortunately, another Prius owner on the premises they seem to be everywhere these days gave me a quick lesson. You start the Prius by pressing a button on the dashboard, not once but twice. To put it in drive or reverse, you manipulate a very small stick protruding from the dashboard.
The next morning, I awoke before dawn and started the Prius, but no matter how many times I pressed the button, I couldn’t get it to move. I finally called Budget roadside assistance, and a polite man talked me back from my private technology disaster. It turns out that I had failed to tap the brake while moving the gear shifter in a certain inexplicable way.
I don’t think I can adapt to the behaviors required by the Prius. But thousands of people are, and Toyota, its maker, is reaping the benefits.
Whether humans will embrace or resist an innovation is the billion-dollar question facing designers of novel products and services. Why do people adapt to some new technologies and not to others? Fortunes are made and lost on the answer.
Great innovations have foundered over human stubbornness. Consider the Picturephone, trumpeted by AT&T at the New York World’s Fair in 1964 as a major technological advance. Engineers reasoned that if hearing someone’s voice over the phone was terrific, wouldn’t seeing a face be even better?
Consumers didn’t think so. AT&T’s Picturephone, which would have added around $90 to a person’s monthly phone bill in 1974, a huge amount for the time, “was superfluous, adding little information to voice alone, especially considering its high price, said Kenneth Lipartito, a professor of history at Florida International University.
Even today, when adding video to a phone is a trivial cost, consumers may rebel. Video-conferencing often remains an activity forced on people by their employers.
Resistance to technology is an omnipresent risk for every innovator. Even a device as fabulously freeing as the personal computer struck some people as an abomination. In 1990, the poet Wendell Berry famously declared his perpetual allegiance to the typewriter in his essay, “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.
Few people joined him, however, a reminder that rejection isn’t the real specter facing new gear. Adaptable humans usually trade one technology for another, rather than reject any and all. To be accepted, innovations must deliver benefits enough benefits to make change worthwhile.
“As consumers we’re constantly asking ourselves, where do we draw the line? How far do we go? says Mitchell Kapor, chairman of the Open Source Applications Foundation in San Francisco.
/// With Compass AE, the Compass team collaboratively establishes the sustainability level of their Tangible Vision.
Businesses crave a sweet spot: where the line is drawn in favor of the innovator. The late Akio Morita, founder of Sony, talked about satisfying appetites that people didn’t even know they had. He achieved such a feat with the Sony Walkman, the music player introduced in 1979. While at the Lotus Development Corporation, Mr. Kapor created another such “killer app, or application: the spreadsheet for the PC.
Killer apps are sought-after innovations because people get addicted to them and make behavioral changes that might otherwise be unthinkable. “Those who benefit from a technology adapt to its constraints and become dependent on it, says John Staudenmaier, editor of the journal Technology and Culture and a historian of technology at the University of Detroit Mercy.
Dependency drives profits, the ultimate arbiter for some of an innovation’s success. Look how Apple has converted the mania for the iPod into record profits and a record stock price.
IPod “addiction seems benign. Yet some worry that other innovations may harbor health threats. As a result, they may be vulnerable to what Marc Ventresca, a lecturer at the Saïd Business School at Oxford, calls the “frog boiling problem. For the frog, gradually rising heat causes no alarm until the water is so hot that death is imminent.
“Adaptation can sometimes be dangerous, but the hazard isn’t apparent until it is ‘too late,’ Mr. Ventresca says.
While people may be fearful of allowing a seductive technology to imperil them the “Frankenstein effect they may also fear the consequences of not changing their ways. As the case of climate change illustrates, many consumers are enthusiastic about changing their behavior in this case, the way they drive cars if they believe that by adapting to new technologies they will save themselves and the planet. Think of the Prius again.
FOR technological innovators, the cash register can ring either way. They may achieve a smash-hit breakthrough, or simply make a slight improvement in a technology that humans already feel comfortable with. Most innovators no longer even try to predict human reactions to their creations.
Henry Kressel, a partner at Warburg Pincus and a co-author of “Competing for the Future: How Digital Innovations Are Changing the World, says, “You throw technologies into the market and see what sticks.
The hope is that passionate “early adopters will blaze a path toward mass acceptance of a new technology. Yet the truth is that no one can tell in advance which innovations people will adapt to and which will become the next example of the Picturephone.
Where people draw the line can be known only after the fact. Which is why innovation is always a risky even humbling business.
G. Pascal Zachary teaches journalism at Stanford and writes about technology and economic development. E-mail: gzach@nytimes.com.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/business/20ping.html
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The lesson is a well-planned innovation creates profits.
With Compass AE, your team can innovate with a Tangible Vision.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Assess the Grand Situation ( Applying Sun Tzu (Sz) Art of War principles) #1
When building the Tangible Vision, assessing the risk can be challenging. This is be achieved by understanding the big picture.
The mindmap shown above, illustrates the basics of assessing the grand situation through the use of the Sunzi (Sun Tzu) principles.
Click on the mindmap for a better view.
For more information on how to assess the grand situation, contact us at contactus [tat]collaboration360[dott] com . [ Replace [tat] with "@" and [dot] with "." ]
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January 16, 2008, 6:31 am
Wrong About Risk? Blame Your Brain
These days, it’s tough to know what to worry about. Resistant bacteria? Cancer? Global warming?
As it turns out, you’re not going to get any extra help from your brain. Although the human brain is well adapted to respond to risk, it’s not so skilled at sorting out which modern risks to worry about. The current issue of Psychology Today explains why in its article “10 Ways We Get the Odds Wrong.'’
“Our biases reflect the choices that kept our ancestors alive. But we have yet to evolve similarly effective responses to statistics, media coverage, and fear-mongering politicians….Though emotions are themselves critical to making rational decisions, they were designed for a world in which dangers took the form of predators, not pollutants.”
Part of the problem is that our emotions have evolved to help our brains make “lightning fast” assessments about risk before we have a chance to think. Things that have been around awhile — snakes and spiders, for instance, scare us. But bigger risks, such as fast driving, don’t trigger the same instinctive response. “Our emotions push us to make snap judgments that once were sensible — but may not be anymore,'’ the author, Maia Szalavitz, writes.
Fear also strengthens memory, the magazine reports. So catastrophes like plane crashes and terrorist attacks stay with us. “As a result, we overestimate the odds of dreadful but infrequent events and underestimate how risky ordinary events are,'’ the author writes.
The problem is, this leads to bad decisions. The magazine notes that after Sept. 11, 1.4 million people changed their travel plans to avoid flying, choosing to drive instead. Driving is far more dangerous. The decision caused roughly 1,000 additional auto fatalities, the magazine reports.
The magazine details several other fascinating examples of how we get risk wrong. We underestimate things that creep up on us, which helps explain why we fear cancer more than heart disease. Having control gives us a false sense of calm, which explains why we worry about pesticides on our foods, even as we use weed killer in our own yards.
And notably, we seem to need a constant level of risk in our lives, which leads to “risk compensation'’ and explains why people end up speeding once they put a seatbelt on.
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10 Ways We Get the Odds Wrong
Our brains are terrible at assessing modern risks. Here's how to think straight about dangers in your midst.
http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20071228-000005.xml
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Friday, January 18, 2008
Striving for the Greater Good
Kudos to Google for their commitment to the greater good, the Global good.
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Google Offers a Map for Its Philanthropy
By HARRIET RUBIN
Google announced a plan on Thursday that begins to fulfill the pledge it made to investors when it went public nearly four years ago to reserve 1 percent of its profit and equity to make the world a better place. The beneficiaries of Google’s money range from groups that are fighting disease to those developing a commercial plug-in car.
The company’s philanthropy Google.org, or DotOrg as Googlers call it will spend up to $175 million in its first round of grants and investments over the next three years, Google officials said. While it is like other companies’ foundations in making grants, it will also be untraditional in making for-profit investments, encouraging Google employees to participate directly and lobbying public officials for changes in policies, company officials said.
Google may be one of America’s 10 richest corporations as measured by market value, but its budget for philanthropy is minuscule compared with the $70 billion of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Still, Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, expressed a hope back in 2004 that someday this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact. What it lacks in size, though, Google.org may make up in cachet.
Larry Brilliant, a medical doctor who took on the role of director of Google.org 18 months ago, said he could not even begin to count how many spending proposals he had seen. There are 6.5 billion people in the world, Dr. Brilliant said in a recent interview, and in the last 18 months I’ve met 6.4 billion, all of whom want, if not some of our money, then some of the Google pixie dust.
Dr. Brilliant, who moved to an ashram in northern India in the 1970s and went on to play a major role in eradicating smallpox in the country, likened his moral quandary in figuring out how to spend Google.org’s money to that faced by a saint wandering the streets of Benares.
There are 500 steps between the road and the Ganges, he said. On every step are beggars, lepers, people who have no arms or legs, people literally starving. The saint has a couple of rupees; how does a good and honorable person make a resource allocation decision? Do you weigh a hand that’s missing more than a leg? Someone who’s starving versus a sick child? In a much less dramatic way, that’s what the last 18 months have been for us.
DotOrg has focused on what it can do uniquely, said Sheryl Sandberg, vice president for global online sales and operations at Google, who, like all employees, is permitted to spend 20 percent of her time at the foundation or in other charitable ventures. If you do things other people could do, you’re not adding value.
In contrast to DotOrg’s close tie to DotCom, employees of Microsoft have made Mr. Gates wealthy but have no official influence in how the Gates Foundation money is spent.
The only urgency imposed on the foundation is how soon it can live up to the expectations. Building a new ecosystem is not an overnight phenomenon, Dr. Brilliant said. Here at Google if you have a project, you press Send. We won’t work that quickly.
But for all the enthusiasm for the new organization, there are critics. It’s wonderful that this company is devoting massive resources to fixing big world problems, but they are taking an engineer’s perspective to them, said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian and media scholar at the University of Virginia. Machines and software are not always the answer. Global problems arise from how humans have undervalued each other and miscommunicated with each other.
He pointed to Google.org’s decision not to take a step like financing scholarships for girls in India who have not had access to education. That’s what is so naïve about Google.org’s approach, he said. If you can educate a thousand girls in one state in India, you’ve already made a bigger difference than 99 percent of the human beings on earth because every one of those of girls can make a difference.
The process of determining what to finance was not easy, said Jacquelline Fuller, the head of advocacy at Google.org. Beginning in the spring of 2007, the 20 team members had 20 ideas. Team members, she said, debated, cried and held hands as we tried to determine what kind of difference we could make. It took them almost a year to winnow down the list.
Although it was just announcing its initiatives on Thursday, Google.org has already begun to give away some of its money.
That is the case with grants for the first of its initiatives what the philanthropy calls predict and prevent. This effort focuses on strengthening early warning systems in countries around the world to detect a disease before it becomes pandemic, or a drought before it becomes a famine.
To attain that, DotOrg has made a grant of $5 million to a nonprofit group that Dr. Brilliant helped to set up, though it is independent from DotOrg. Called Instedd, for Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters, the group seeks to improve data and communication networks. An additional $2.5 million has been awarded to the Global Health and Security Initiative to respond to biological threats in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and China’s Yunnan Province.
In recent years, Dr. Brilliant said, 39 new communicable diseases with a potential to become pandemic have jumped species, including SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome; monkey pox and bird flu.
What if we could have been there when the H.I.V. moved from animal to chimp to human and could have averted that risk? he asked. To prevent or abort or slow a pandemic saves tens of millions of lives.
The second initiative, called the missing middle, refers to the missing middle class in Africa and South Asia and the missing middle level of financing between microcredits and hedge funds.
Microcredit funds currently provide families with three or four or five days of livelihood, Dr. Brilliant said. No country, he said, has ever emerged from poverty because of microcredit. Jobs make that possible. China did it with manufacturing, India did it with outsourced call centers.
To that end, DotOrg has awarded $3 million to TechnoServe to find worthy entrepreneurs and help them build credit records and get access to larger markets.
The third initiative, information for all, is aimed at helping developing countries provide better government services by making information available on their efforts to improve health care, roads and electrification. India has promised health care, work, and transparency throughout, Dr. Brilliant said. Yet it’s hard to do something like this on the scale that India is trying to do, to let people know what their entitlement is.
DotOrg has awarded $2 million to support the Annual Status of Education report in India to assess the quality of education; $765,000 to create a Budget Information Service to improve district-level planning, and $660,000 to build communities of researchers and policy makers to deliver information.
DotOrg decided to finance literacy information because, said Lant Pritchett, a DotOrg adviser who teaches economic development at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, We’re looking for things where Google could have a transformative impact. Ideas, flexibility, entrepreneurship are better than just cash on the table.
Google.org’s fourth initiative supports the development of renewable energy sources that are cleaner and cheaper than coal. DotOrg has invested $10 million in eSolar, a company in Pasadena, Calif., that specializes in solar thermal power.
The philanthropy is also working to accelerate the commercialization of plug-in vehicles. Google, whose own computers and customers use plenty of energy, does not want to be part of the problem; we want to be part of the solution, Dr. Brilliant said.
We’re not trying to bring returns to Google, Dr. Brilliant said. Profits are vital to businesses that will support the missions.
Mark Dowie, author of the book American Foundations, said DotOrg is part of a new mode of philanthropy that is very similar to venture capitalism, holding those they fund responsible in ways never seen before. The danger, he said, is that a lot of philanthropic work is not quantifiable. How do you qualify arts grant making, for example.
Still, he added, what would be worse is for Google not to give away its money, but to hoard it.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/technology/18google.html
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
The Growing Trend of Telecommuting
As telecommuting becomes a trend, many project team individuals will be working from remote sites.
The question is will they be able to collaborate as a team regardless of the distance, the technology and the project culture?
In a future article, we will discuss some of the challenges relating to telecommuting and how Compass AE can be the solution.
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A typical telecommuting challenge
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If you have any questions on how to collaborate remotely as a team, please contact us through contactus[tat]collaboration[dott]com. Replace [tat] with "@" and [dot] with "." We will send you a white paper on our Compass AE methodology.
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Good News for Professionals Who Want to Work at Home
By Sue Shellenbarger
Amid the numerous files I juggle on my desk, one has been growing steadily for years. It now contains a 3½-inch stack of missives from readers, all asking the same question: How can I get a good job working from home? After years with few answers, I have news at last:
A growing number of employers, from UnitedHealth Group and Safeco to Capgemini, IBM, American Express and Sun Microsystems, are hiring skilled new employees to telecommute right from the start. These aren't the piecework, independent-contractor gigs or commission-only sales jobs that have characterized at-home "employment" in the past. They are full-time corporate jobs with benefits, available without the prerequisite of working for the company for a few years first.
Before you rush to your email or phone to ask how to snag one of these jobs -- read on. These new work-at-home opportunities number only in the thousands, a speck on a vast U.S. labor-force landscape of 150 million workers. Landing one often requires a serendipitous confluence of sought-after skills, experience, personal attributes and timing, along with a measure of luck.
The Juggle |
Nevertheless, the nascent trend is remarkable for the breadth of industries it encompasses, from financial services to health care, and for what it heralds for the future. The factors driving it -- the unmet need for skilled workers, improvements in mobile-office technology and a drive to cut real-estate costs -- are solid. All this suggests a new hole has opened in the dam of employer resistance to telecommuting.
"I don't see any downside" to expanding work-at-home hires, says Jeff Diana, senior vice president, human resources, for Safeco, a Seattle-based insurer. Safeco has hired 91 new home-based employees so far this year, including claims examiners, adjustors and managers; about 1,500 of its 7,000 employees now work away from corporate offices, dramatically expanding Safeco's talent pool. "With technology as good as it is," Mr. Diana says, "there aren't many jobs that can't be done remotely."
/// It is only a matter of time, companies would realize that they don't need to be invested in as much brick and mortar as they are right now. ///
Networking is among the best ways to land one of these jobs. That's how Steve Sisco became a telecommuting underwriter in Birmingham, Ala., for Phoenix Cos., an insurance and investment concern. A 25-year veteran of the insurance industry, Mr. Sisco sought a work-at-home position about three years ago. He likes knowing that "I could just pack up my computer and go anywhere."
Having a hot skill set is usually essential. Nurses, computer technicians, financial analysts, software engineers, project and marketing managers, programmers, recruiters and underwriters are among common targets at the moment. Delma Sweazey, Seminole, Fla., a nurse and clinical-care manager, was hired earlier this year by UnitedHealth, traveling to see patients in their homes and elsewhere several days a week and doing paperwork and phone calls from home; this gives her flexibility to see her two children off to school. Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealth expects to hire a total of 2,000 people into telecommuting jobs this year, says Tom Valerius, vice president, recruitment services.
Beyond that, candidates must persuade employers they're dependable. "If you say, 'I want to be a telecommuter because I have kids at home,' or, 'I need to let my dog out,' it's not going to work," Mr. Valerius says. Instead, prove that you can work unsupervised, be accountable for goals, and be available for meetings and training.
Some work-at-home wannabes get hired by living in an employer's target region. American Express has identified certain areas of the country for hiring at-home travel agents, including Nashville and parts of Texas, says Christine Anderson, a vice president, human resources, and plans to expand into other regions in 2008. Thus Monica Andrews, who formerly ran her own travel agency, was able to hire on with AmEx last year as a Cedar Park, Texas-based telecommuter.
Capgemini, a Paris-based consulting firm, sometimes hires telecommuters in areas where it has clients but no offices, such as Minneapolis, Denver and parts of Texas.
Email your comments to sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com.
www.careerjournal.com/columnist#
A rephrase from Cao Cao, ancient Chinese strategist "If you wait long enough, opportunities appear. "
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Current State of Telecommuters
Collaboration360's Compass AE training enables remote team members to be connected to their goal. They collaboratively build a Tangible Vision that delineates their goal, the objectives and how a team operates as a team. The Tangible Vision also includes the risks and rewards for working as a team.
When they finally connected with those specifics, they will stay connected as team regardless of the distance, the technology and the project culture.
If you have any questions or if you are interested in our white paper on telecommuting and distance collaboration, please email us at contactus [tat]collaboration360[dott] com .
[ Replace [tat] with "@" and [dot] with "." ]
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Telecommuting not so great for those left in office
[ Reuters ]
Telecommuting may boost morale, and cut stress, but it can have the opposite effect on those left behind in the office, according to a new study.
When a number of their co-workers toil away from the office by using computers, cell phones, or other electronic equipment, those who do not telecommute are more likely to be dissatisfied with their job and leave the company, said Timothy Golden, a management professor at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Telecommuting has been a growing trend in the United States since about 2000. About 37 percent of U.S.-based and international companies now offer flexible work arrangements, with the number of those programs growing at a rate of 11 percent per year, according to the Society of Human Resource Management.
Several studies have touted the health and morale benefits for flexible workers, but Golden's research suggests that their co-workers tend to find the workplace less enjoyable, have fewer emotional ties to co-workers, and generally feel less obligated to the organization.
"While reasons for the adverse impact on non-teleworkers are varied, it possibly is due to co-workers' perceptions that they have decreased flexibility and a higher workload and the greater frustration that comes with coordinating in an environment with more extensive
telework," Golden said.
He added that with a greater prevalence of telecommuters in a work unit, non-telecommuters find it less personally fulfilling to do their work.
But by ensuring greater face-to-face contact between co-workers when all employees are in the office and granting greater job autonomy, employers may be able to counter these problems, according to the study published in the journal Human Relations.
"There's little doubt that work life impacts one's role in the family. However, organizational decision makers need to take into account the broader impact of telework on others in the office," Golden said.
He studied a sample of 240 professional employees from a medium-size company.
(c)2007 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. CNET , CNET.com , and the CNET logo are registered trademarks of CNET Networks, Inc. Used by permission.
Story Copyright (c) 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100
Friday, January 11, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Competing in the Global Economy: A Grand Vision with No Tangibility
Intel exiting from the "One Laptop Per Child" (OLPC) project should not be a surprise. Bad events happen to those who possess a grand vision that lacks tangibility and detailed specifics. Am sure they developed a plan that didn't take account of negative circumstances.
"One Laptop Per Child" people did not plan that there will be competition with grander resources. who will surpass them within a short time period.
Negroponte should have known that his technological edge was minimal at best. The competition should be able to duplicate and improve on their design within a short timeline.
/// Sidebar: Defining and preparing for negative circumstances is considered to be a turnoff for some people. As one Silicon Valley person told me,"... Don't talk negative. It is bad vibe for the team. ... Got to be positive. " ///
Seen this storyline with many global startups who are "social cause-driven" with no concept of the bigger picture, winded up as road kills.
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Nonprofit slips in race for cheap laptop for world's poor kids
Problems at One Laptop Per Child show how social entrepreneurs can blaze trails but miss the payoff.
By Ben Arnoldy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Oakland, Calif.
The vision was grand: Develop a cheap laptop and get it into the hands of 150 million school children in the developing world.
Making the computer turned out to be the easy part. On Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop Per Child, showed off the $200 XO. The innovative computer sports a bright screen readable in sunshine and a highly efficient battery that can be recharged by cranking it.
But One Laptop has run into controversy – a corporate partner and the group's chief technology officer pulled out in recent weeks – which has experts noting perils for the broader social entrepreneur movement.
Social entrepreneurs, who aim to solve social problems using business-world principles, have tackled everything from expanding rural credit to marketing indigenous crafts in recent years. But experts say the problems at One Laptop point to a challenge for these emerging entrepreneurs. They often excel at trailblazing new markets among the world's poor but struggle to achieve large-scale sales and distribution.
"In many respects, these social entrepreneurs are pathfinders, they are like the research and development for bigger players that have otherwise ignored the bottom of the pyramid market," says James Koch, a professor at Santa Clara University in California.
For example, One Laptop's XO has proven the concept of cheap laptops. Companies like Lenovo and Intel, sensing the market potential, are now working on their own models. This isn't necessarily bad for One Laptop's ultimate goal.
"Part of our model of success is to have competition, to have other people in this space," says Walter Bender, president of software and content at One Laptop. "We don't need to be the monopoly or biggest player in the market."
/// What we have here is an intangible view of a global economy. MY question is: If you are not going to be big, what are you going to be?
The world is filled with predators waiting for smart but naive people to make the grand mistake.
Dragons create opportunities. Tigers find opportunities. Wolves wait for opportunities. In a life and death struggle, a hungry wolfpack usually prevails over a smaller prey.
But the competitors' products aren't helping One Laptop's efforts to secure big orders. So far, it has orders for 500,000 laptops, with more than 100,000 already en route to places such as Afghanistan and Haiti. But it's far behind its goal to sell 150 million units by the end of 2008.
One reason for the shortfall, One Laptop alleges, is that a former partner – Intel – was disparaging the XO as it developed its own ultra-cheap laptop, the Classmate.
"Their sales people were saying, 'Because we're on the board, we have inside info and we know that everything is broken and it doesn't work,' " says Mr. Bender.
Intel has told a different story, saying that Mr. Negroponte was unreasonably demanding that the company stop marketing the Classmate in regions targeted by One Laptop. Intel didn't respond to an interview request.
/// Inviting current competition to join your group was not a smart idea.
"Do not loan sharp weapons to other men. If you loan sharp weapons to other men, you will be hurt by them and will not live out your allotted span of years." --- Jiang Tai Gong Six Secret Teachings (Sawyer X'lation) ///
Partnerships with multinational corporations can be double-edged swords for nonprofit startups. On the one hand, they're one of the quickest ways for startups to ramp up delivery of a product. On the other hand, nonprofits and corporations have different bottom lines, which means that such partnerships need to develop slowly and carefully, says Nora Silver, director of the Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership at the University of California, Berkeley.
A successful partnership between clothing-manufacturer Timberland and CityYear, a nationwide volunteer corps, took years to forge. The Intel partnership, however, seemed hasty and didn't integrate the sales force into the effort, Dr. Silver says.
"Did these folks have a clear contract?" she asks. "You have to be very clear about such basic agreements."
One Laptop was acting as if they had a contract with exclusivity and noncompete clauses, she adds. Bender says there was only a nondisparage agreement.
The difficulty of scaling up a business isn't limited to social entrepreneurs. For-profit startups struggle with it, too. But entrepreneurs have a bigger challenge when they target poor people, especially those who are uneducated and live in remote areas.
Traditional marketing campaigns on TV and billboards may miss these customers entirely. And putting the product on shelves may not be enough. The entrepreneurs may have to find ways to advance small loans to would-be buyers. They may have to find indigenous nonprofit groups that could open markets that a corporation would never devote the time or have the credibility to crack.
One Laptop decided to target ministries of education to get bulk orders for schools. Working with those agencies, even in the developed world, requires a lot of effort and patience, notes John Quelch, a professor at the Harvard Business School.
"One of the knocks against [One Laptop] could be that they focused very much at achieving a price point for the product, but didn't necessarily focus as much on developing a solution for the ministry of education for country X," says Dr. Quelch, adding that this can be a common pitfall.
/// Our Compass AE process focuses on the team collaboratively defining clear specifications from goal to objectives. If the specifics do not connect from milestone to milestone, the Tangible Vision does not work. ///
"Initially, we had three or four people doing that around the globe, which is a stretch," says Bender. One Laptop is now working closely with Brightstar, the world's largest cellphone distributor, to help with global logistics.
from the January 11, 2008 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0111/p03s04-stct.html
/// When building a Tangible Vision, it is important to focus on creating strategic positioning from top to bottom.
In the case of OLPC, their product does not offer any long term tangible "strategic positioning" leverage. The building of their marketing plan should have been focused on creating "strategic positioning".
Remember, Strategic Positioning = Strategic Advantage. ///
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Competing in the Global Economy ( The Dao of Strategy)
Regardless of the sports and the event, mindless jocks and reporters give the same reasoning why a certain team will win the big game- emotion, individual speed, athleticism and the attitude. Rarely do they say anything that is significantly relevant regarding to the coming "big"game.
There are other important factors that also play a major role in the outcome of the game like talent, injuries, home-field advantage and big game experience.
To compete in the global economy, contemplate like a strategist, not a mindless, hooded jock-warrior dressed in a new suit. This is why ultra professionals like Phil Jackson and Belichek wins most of the time.
Conclusion: Good strategic thinking and implementation is like money in the bank.
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During the early phase of our Compass AE development, we learned a great deal about how people devise their strategy. We concluded that their professional experience and skill set plays a grand role in viewing strategic situations and the big picture.
While most tacticians cannot perform the role of the grand strategist, many grand strategists cannot operate as a tactician.
Will touch on this topic later.
Copyright:2008 © Collaboration360 Consultants (C360).
Saturday, January 5, 2008
The Strategist as a Fisherman (2)
Most fishermen knows that there are no big fishes in little ponds or small guppies in oceans of sharks and whales?
Before choosing "The Gold Standard" option for their Tangible Vision, one assesses their grand settings and themselves.
--- More to come. ---
Thursday, January 3, 2008
A New Year and A Revised Tangible Vision
Happy New Year to one and all
This past year has been an interesting year for Collaboration360. After four yrs of researching, developing and experimenting, we introduced our concept of top-down project planning to potential clients.
The concept of our Compass AE process was new to many people. Gaining access to them was a challenge. Once it was presented to potential clients, they became interested in implementing our process.
This past year, we have guided and mentored startups from different industrial niches and assisted them in the following:
- strategic marketing;
- marketing development;
- product development; and
- operations management
Establish "The Gold Standard"
During their initial Build and Connect stage of their training, we suggested that they should establish a goal that gives them a position of strategic advantage. It forces their competitors to be the pursuer not the leader. (This particular view is called "Establishing the Gold Standard").
The "Gold Standard" is a standard of quality and excellence that gives the implementors a strategic lead over their competitors
The Importance of Defining a "Gold Standard" within a Tangible Vision?
Being seasoned professionals, we believe in establishing a strategic lead with innovation and quality. Our Compass AE training enabled the client to decide whether to plan for a strategic lead.
Establishing a strategic lead might not always be a good idea. This move depends greatly on the constraints embedded in the client's grand settings.
Achieving Strategic Lead
Achieving this level of strategy positioning requires the team to have strategic insights and experience in their area of expertise and the overall marketplace.
While there were clients who believed in this view of strategic positioning. There were others who prefer a less risky and reactive strategic approach. This choice usually lead to a state of being stressed and grinded by their competitors.
Choosing "The Gold Standard" option is up to the client . As long as the benefits of defining and pursuing "The Gold Standard" is understood, they had the right to build, connect and implement their Tangible Vision within their own comfort level.
The Benefits of Creating a Strategic Position
The client's project team who boldly established a "Gold Standard" in their Tangible Vision, were able to do the following:
- Secured positional advantage in their competitive arena;
- Performed long advanced planning and strategic matters while minding the "big picture";
- Influenced the opposition to grind
Revised Our Own Tangible Vision
While our message of "collaboration without borders" is still relevant, we decided to focus on how project teams can accelerate their workflow through the use of Compass AE.
When a team properly built and connected with their Tangible Vision, they were able to do the following:
- Understand the critical path;
- Avoid negatives, focus on positives;
- Anticipate opportunities;
- Adjust strategically;
- Shape the Tangible Vision; and
- Lead by strategic collaboration
Outcome from Build, Connect and Lead with the Tangible Vision
During our review of the client use of Compass AE, we discovered that the team achieved the following:
- accelerated workflow
- positive team collaboration and
- effective meetings.
Final Thoughts
In future entries, we will cover the following topics:
- Apply Compass AE in a corporate bureaucratic setting;
- Apply Compass AE in a chaotic, fast-moving setting; and
- Apply Compass AE regardless of the distance, the technology and the project culture
If you have any questions or comments, drop us a line. We wish everyone a prosperous 2008.
With Best Regards,
C360 Chief Architect
Copyright:2008 © Collaboration360 Consultants (C360).
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