By now, if you've tapped into almost any media source, you've heard of how the Costa Concordia ran aground, sank, and created a world of mayhem for all involved.

The initial cause as I read about it in the media, is,"…made an unauthorized, unapproved deviation from its programmed course, a "human error" that led to the grounding of the vessel…," says the chief executive of the ship's Italian…

In one of the product management forums I monitor, there has been an ongoing discussion about decision ownership. For instance, does the product manager make all the final decisions regarding his or her product?

As the discussion evolved, it reminded me a guiding principal a mentor gave me early in my career. "Never lose alone."

The best successes come from collaborative efforts, working alongside others. You may get lucky as a sole…

As leaders I think we all find our teams besieged by fires at one point in

time or another.  Sometimes it seems they’re simply building one atop another

and, unless you can do something, you risk being over run…your core mission

compromised.

In a corporate environment the fires can seem to come at your team from every direction.  The President pulls on your strings, Sales is pulling on Development, Projects demand ECOs…

“The B2B Executive Playbook”

by: Sean Geehan

ISBN: 1-57860-446-X

ISBN-13:

978-1-57860-446-3

First and foremost, The B2B Executive Playbook really resonated well with me.  With two decades in the software industry, most of that time in customer-facing roles, it validated much of my own experience and thoughts.

Think of B2B as a complement to…

Three times this week, I have stumbled across discussions of ‘online tools’ in relation to product management.  And, in each

case, numerous software solutions were named, yet no one specifically discussed social media.  How’s that?

At first, I noticed that social media wasn’t being included by

virtue of, what seemed to me, a glaring omission.  After all, in today’s world, consumers can rip a company a ‘new one’ quite…

This book is for leaders and managers (aspiring leaders) continuing to look for ways to survive in our never ending, ever faster world.  In short: Good book. Enjoyed it.  Found it was inline with many of the issues contemporary business leaders increasingly face every day.

In The Anywhere Leader, Mike Thompson’s written a book that suggests, just possibly, he could pick up in the shoes of the late…

In my experience, negativity is often a symptom. Rather than treat the symptoms, the negativity being expressed, it is better to search out the crux of the problem.



Perhaps it is an individual, a 'negative' leadership personality, in which coaching and/or other change may be required.



More often, I find negativity stems from senior management, from the ‘leadership.’ This comes in the form of unstated expectations; no clear direction and/or…

Well, I might have made the count '4,' with the latter being Communication. I’m referring to a recent post I discovered, “The Only Three Things a leader Should Focus On—Brains, Bones, and Nerves.” The article's primarily about what the leader must do, how the leader should do it, what the leader should be thinking about.…

Harvard Business Review’s John Baldoni perhaps says it best, “Credibility is a leader's coin of the realm. With it, she can lead people to the Promised Land; without it, she wanders in the desert of lost expectations.” (http://bit.ly/o7cy4W)

Why does credibility matter? At it’s most fundamental level, it…

This morning I discovered an engaging article, “Making a Successful Software Licensing & Entitlement Management Project a Reality.”

The crux of the article is a focus on two groups, Product Management and IT, that need to be involved when deciding to make changes to your company’s software licensing and…

“Getting Things Done—The Art of Stress-Free Productivity”

by: David Allen

ISBN: 978-1-101-12849-7

Getting Things Done, or ‘GTD’ as adoptees like to refer to it, is indeed a productivity book. But it’s not about ‘time management,’ to-do lists, or other seemingly similar equivalents. Through GTD, Allen attempts to help the reader not only with their professional lives, but their personal lives as well.

Getting…

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to hear AJ Deeds (@MyLovingWorks) talk about content.  You know, the ‘stuff’ we have to spend time on, that acts like filler material, enabling us to use our shiny objects.

Or, have we let all the shiny objects out there distract us from what really matters: content.  Why do people…

In separate thread, Jon Madian, did indeed highlight a significant area for…

Interesting article: When your offering is like the fridge of the new kitchen.  The gist of it is, how do you diversify your product/service offering, if it’s basically taken for granted?  People simply expect it to be there, keeping things chilled, perhaps with water/ice dispenser, but otherwise not the key item around which major decisions are based.

“Enchantment”

by: Guy Kawasaki

ISBN: 978-1-59184-379-5

Every once in a while, there comes a book you’re sorry to see come to an end. It’s not to say other books you’ve read were not tremendously enjoyable…just that they often come to an end about the time you’re ready for them to.  With Enchantment, I really…

Around the nation, gasoline prices at the pump are again climbing—and at a pretty good clip, too.  So it’s not uncommon to hear people begin to wonder again, How high will it go?

From my perspective, there is a silver lining to higher fuel prices.  As transportation costs go up (bad for our truckers), the harder it is to continue off-shoring manufacturing labor.  I remember in 2008 seeing ABC News reports of furniture…

In response to my original article, Why Do IT Projects Slip, I received some responses suggesting that Agile was the solution.  Two thoughts cause me to speak to these responses. …

In order to move their activities forward, business leaders routinely need to work at pushing forward new ideas, work at getting them approved, and overcome significant obstacles. Here, we’ll discuss just one: Hiring Freezes.

Companies are always hiring even with ‘hiring freezes’ in effect.  While at Autodesk, early in my career, I used to be amazed at how we would have hiring freezes in effect, yet at the same time we would…

This afternoon I came across a LinkedIn comment which lead me to read through an article discussing, “What are the basic principles of IT project management?”  I think the article is really just a piece of linkbait.

The person posting the article added the comment, “Projects progress rapidly until they become 90 percent complete; they then remain 90 percent complete forever.”  The comment is more interesting than the…