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Standards and Expectations Warning Flag 2 – Ghost Standards

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Some things can go without saying… performance standards are not one of them. By defining expected behaviors, performance standards serve as both a translation of the organization’s values and a foundational cornerstone of individual accountability.

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StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 34a – An Interview with Dave Esler, co-author of The Pursuit of Something Better, part 1 of 2

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StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 34a – An Interview with Dave Esler, co-author of The Pursuit of Something Better, part 1 of 2 examines how U.S. Cellular achieved superior results by becoming a Dynamic Organization, a transformational change that focused the organization on the customer and on valuing its front line associates. During our discussion, Dave Esler, co-author of The Pursuit of Something Better and Principal at Esler Kruger Associates, shares with us his insights and illustrative examples regarding:

  • performance gains U.S. Cellular made from 2000 to 2008 by evolving into a ‘Dynamic Organization’
  • what a ‘Dynamic Organization’ is and the model’s major components
  • tools used to implement the ‘Dynamic Organization’ concept
  • how U.S. Cellular defined its corporate values

Additional Information

In addition to the invaluable insights Dave shares in The Pursuit of Something Better and this special edition podcast are the resources accessible from his website, www.EslerKruger.com.   Dave’s book, The Pursuit of Something Better, can be purchased by clicking here.

About the Author

Dave Esler, co-author of The Pursuit of Something Better, is a Principal at Esler Kruger Associates, a consulting firm that for more than 20 years has helped organizations and their leaders become more effective. Dave has a corporate background in communications and human resources from Metropolitan Life and Nortel Networks and several years of consulting experience. He is the author of many articles on a variety of business topics.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:26 — 46.0MB)

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Project Management Warning Flag 3 – Frequent Re-baselining

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Changing circumstances and constrained resources challenge the on-time, on-budget completion of every project. And in the real business world, some projects incur significant scope changes and others will fall behind schedule.

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Standards and Expectations Warning Flag 1 – Standards Creep

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StrategyDriven Standards and Expectations Warning Flag articleHave you ever been confronted by a customer’s challenge that your product or service quality just isn’t what it used to be? Or notice the number of quality defects in your products or services has somehow increased over the past months, quarters, or years? Or felt so much pressure to get something done that you deemed the quality to be ‘good enough for government work?’

All of these are signs of standards creep; not a beneficial raising of the bar but rather an allowance of ever worsening performance.

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Adaptive Project Framework is not your Father’s Project Management

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We all agree that projects are unique. They will never happen again under the same set of circumstances or conditions. Given that, wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect the management of those projects to also be unique?

The world doesn’t stand still just because you are managing a project. That is one reason why requirements cannot possibly be completely documented at the initiation phase of a project. Whatever management approach you choose to use for your project must be adaptable to changing conditions. Traditional project management models are poorly equipped to accommodate change.

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About the Author

Robert K. Wysocki, Ph.D., has more than forty years of experience as a project management consultant and trainer, information systems manager, systems and management consutant, author, and training developer and provider. His sixteen books on project and IT management include the PMI-recommended Effective Project Management, Fifth Edition (Wiley, 2009). In 1990, Robert founded Enterprise Information Insights, Inc. (EII), a consulting and training practice that specializes in helping large organizations run projects more effectively. His clients range from AT&T and Aetna to the U.S. Army Signal Corps, Wal-Mart, and Wells Fargo.