Curiouser and Curiouser!

Tech writer iced for expressing opinion. Not 'objective' [The Register]

The story is probably going to become typical as the days go by.  Corporate ownership of the press is an ugly business only overshadowed by state ownership of the press.

I found the Reporters sans frontières worldwide press freedom index quite interesting.   The USA languishing at #17 didn't surprise me but the UK being at #21 did.  I hadn't realised that things were actually worse here!  I doubt anyone in Italy will be surprised by their showing at #40.  Thank you signor Berlusconi!

THE LISTENING LEADER

"Lifting Listening Leadership Awareness and Action Worldwide"

03/31/03

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LISTENING-BASED INNOVATION

Continuing success comes from value-creating innovation stimulated by disciplined listening. Occasional surveys are insufficient. Organizations need to build listening systems that capture, summarize, and disseminate the unmet dreams and unfulfilled wants of multiple customer groups, including existing, prospective, and internal customers (employees).

Listening systems uncover fresh marketplace intelligence, help guide decision making, and nurture creative thinking. Effective listening systems involve both formal and informal methods, conversations with customers, the use of trend data to reveal changing patterns, the distribution of relevant information to all employees, and active discussion and application of findings in work groups.

Listening leads to learning, which sets the stage for innovation. Innovation is more likely when employees are well informed about the customer, unafraid to try something new, and committed to the organization's success.

Charles Schwab uses multiple methods to listen for customers' dreams that often start with the phrase, "I know it's not possible, but I wish....." Schwab's top management travels extensively to interact with customers in informal settings. Branches host monthly customer receptions, and at least once a week in different cities. Schwab holds town meetings to hear employees' ideas, suggestions, and concerns.

Gary Hoover, who has created three innovative businesses (Bookstop, Hoover's Handbooks, and TravelFest) claims that the customers always get what they want. It is just a matter of who gives it to them when. Companies that sustain success continually search for new ways to create value for customers. They choose to lead rather than follow, to act rather than wait, to heed the customer instead of the competitor.

Source: Leading for the Long Term, Leonard Berry, Leader to Leader

More good stuff from the Listening Leader (one of the few daily e-mail shots that I subscribe to).

For a company that is ready to hear (and encourage) real news from the front-line a network of internal action journals would mae a very powerful listening system.  More intelligence (and potential for automated news gathering) could be added to this by using simple topic map techniques (e.g. annotating each post with 1 or 2 topics describing the business area/project, tone of each post, etc...)

Some of you may already have spotted that my weblog has moved.  With grateful thanks to Paolo I have relocated C&C to its new, permanent, home @

http://matt.blogs.it/

(With apologies in advance for the likely upheaval over the next couple of weeks as things get straightened out)

Project Portfolio Management. Project (Portfolio) Management...Like Herding Cats? by Glen B. Alleman. Glen is a regular contributor to PM World Today writing on Information Technology projects. Check out his other articles when you visit this one.

While many of us project managers struggle with our own project, firms often need to manage collections of projects. Glen has been writing about how to think about and organize an approach that can be successful.

Glen writes, "Before projects can be ready for (project) portfolio management (PPM) they must possess certain attributes.

• The clear start and end date – what is the drop–dead date?
• A definition of “done” – what needs to be in for this project “earn its keep?”
• A business case – on what day does this project breakeven?
• A priority ranking – what projects are more or less important than this one?

"These attributes seem “obvious” at first glance, but it is breathtaking how many projects don’t posses these simple attributes."

The Foundation of Portfolio Management

Glen says PPM depends on four concurrent processes.

• A Balanced Scorecard strategy to define priorities and establish a connection between every project and a specific strategy and objective.
• A public registry of projects, resources, and deliverables housed in Microsoft Project 2002 Server.
• An Earned Value performance reporting and measurement processes to make visible performance metrics for cost and schedule.
• A process to select, classify, measure, and guide the implementation for collections of IT projects.

"(W)ithout a business context and a strategic goal, the project manager is simply a cog in the administrative wheels of the firm."

Stick with this guy. He's thoughtful, practical, and working at the edge of emerging theory and practice.
[Reforming Project Management]

I could post so much more from Hal's blog.  It is a veritable treasure trove of good stuff for those involved (or just interested) in managing projects.