There’s an old physics joke. “How do you model a cow? Well, you start by assuming a spherical cow in a vacuum…” I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve been in the design or planning phase of a complex engineering project, and invariably someone draws a simple block diagram on the whiteboard and […]
So I have my MBA, amongst other college degrees and certifications. Although I try not to live my entire business life around my MBA, it did teach me some valuable quantitative approaches to things. Here’s an example. Recently, my old TV died (interesting that I used the word “died”, instead of just “broke” or “became […]
I have yet even more to talk about on this topic! I used to work for an organization whose motto was “The Constant Pursuit of Perfection!”. I think this is great. But let’s talk about that concept, of “perfection”. Can anything ever be perfect? As we’ve been discussing, we can’t even assert that anything will […]
In the past I’ve talked about peer reviews, on the idea that you will always get some negative feedback, no matter how hard you try. It’s partially the concept of “done”. As in, is anything ever done, complete, there’s nothing else to do? What’s fascinating to me is how this intersects with the concept of […]
After last week’s post, I realized I had more I wanted to say. There is another situation related to this that I frequently see. Let’s go back to that aforementioned “group of persons working on addressing the strategic problems faced by an organization.” So when you are facing a tactical decision, such as the “wires […]
In 1986, computer software development pioneer Fred Brooks wrote a paper called “No Silver Bullet”. In this paper, he asserts, “there is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order of magnitude improvement…” (Brooks, Frederick P. (1986). “No Silver Bullet—Essence and Accident in Software Engineering” (PDF). Proceedings […]
There’s a personality trait I’ve seen with high-quality leaders, a soft skill if you will. I’m not really sure what it is called, but I heard a person one time refer to it as “bandwidth”. But that’s not quite right. Let me try and explain it. As a senior business leader, you might have dozens […]
Want to hear a secret about me? Come closer, I’ll share it. Ready? I am TERRIFIED of flying. What’s funny about it is that I fly a lot, but still on every flight I’m gripping the armrest with white knuckles, fearing for my life. And yet intellectually I know I’m safe. I’ve studied a lot […]
When you are a startup or a smaller business, it can be easier to tell whether you are actually making money. I recall working with a lot of small business owners and many of them literally were of the mindset, “Is there money in the checking account at the end of the month? Is it […]
I was talking with a coworker the other day and this person made an interesting observation. They pointed out that almost every strategic business problem that we come across is talked about in academia or in some business book somewhere, including tactics and approaches to address them. Essentially, how many truly unique and novel problems […]
Knuggets of Knowledge 