Business of BPM

Crazy Bosses

I am not sure if you read Stanley Bing from Fortune.  He has some great articles.  I especially like some of his new stuff.  He has a new book out called Crazy Bosses and has readers submitting online stories about some of their craziest.  It made me think about a few of the crazy things I have seen bosses (not all mine) do.  It also made me think about the fact that in three jobs over 10 years I have had 18 bosses.  I think once I actually had the same boss for 12 months.

It is hard to build that consistency and approach when the organizational sands are constant.  (All the more reason for a process infrastructure that institutionalizes and embeds learning into a process.)

So, what are some of the more interesting things I have seen:

1. The SVP of Operations assigning a team of VPs and Directors to work on a project for months only to reveal that the only reason he did it was because the CIO wouldn't approve his project for workflow automation unless he co-sponsored this strategy initiative.  (The CIO left so he revealed this fact and disbanded the team.)
2. A VP who would not let her team start meetings or attend a dinner event at a conference until she was there...even though she was chronically 15-30 minutes late. 
3. A boss (of mine) who actually lived in another country and during the three months I worked for him never actually talked to me.  He would tell my old boss things which I would hear days later.
4. One of the senior officers of a company coming in to my office and yelling at me (even throwing stuff at me) because I had him listed as optional for a meeting via Outlook.  (Never mind the fact that I had invited his boss and subsequently forwarded the invitation to him in which case it automatically shows him as optional.)
5. After facilitating a meeting of senior executives which was sponsored by two of them, I was asked to put together meeting minutes.  One of them asked me to distribute them while another asked me not to.  The one SVP was my boss' boss.  I asked her again and told her what her peer had said.  I sent them out and within minutes had the other SVP in my office very upset.  She never stepped in and defended her decision.
6. A partner who used to come in every Friday, close the door to the project manager's office, and yell at her for about 30 minutes.  You never heard anything else from him.
7. A senior manager who commuted to a project and just stayed there for nine months.  He had no life.  Six months after the project ended, he tried to submit all his expenses even though the engagement was long over.  (Not to mention I don't understand why he floated them for so long.)

I could go on, but that is it for now.  Make sure to share your stories with Stanley at his site.

5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers

At Express Scripts, all of us on the leadership team (top 1.5%) were given the book The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers.  It was a good book with several relevant tips especially for someone in the BPM space that is likely playing the role of change agent or somone whose career might include an objective of becoming the Chief Process Officer or Chief Innovation Officer. 

From the website, I have pulled in the 5 Patterns.  They also have an online quiz which gives you feedback on whether you are on your way to an extraordinary career. 

1. Understand the Value of You
People with extraordinary careers understand how value is created in the workplace, and translate that knowledge into action, building their personal value over each phase of their careers.

2. Practice Benevolent Leadership
People with extraordinary careers do not claw their way to the top, they are carried there.

3. Overcome the Permission Paradox
People with extraordinary careers overcome one of the great Catch-22s of business: you can't get the job without experience and you can't get the experience without the job.

4. Differentiate Using the 20/80 Principle of Performance
People with extraordinary careers do their defined jobs exceptionally well but don't stop there. They storm past pre-determined objectives to create breakthrough ideas and deliver unexpected impact.

5. Find the Right Fit (Strengths, Passions & People)
People with extraordinary careers make decisions with the long-term in mind.  They willfully migrate towards positions that fit their natural strengths and passions and where they can work with people they like and respect.

No Creativity in China

I was reading the most recent Fast Company this afternoon.  It has a good article about the emerging creative sector within the Chinese business community.  The only thing that soured me was their assumption that anyone was stupid enough to think that all China could produce was widgets.

In this multi-cultural world, I hope all of us are open enough to realize that diversity has a huge benefit which is called innovation.  A country with 1B people (even with strong government control) is going to produce all kinds of people that will eventually transform the world we live in. 

Creative Rigor and Planned Spontaneity

I had been debating starting a second (or technically third) blog.  As you may already know, BPM Enterprise is another site which I originally posted blogs on, but now they have been kind enough to simply repost my blogs.  This gets me access to about 5,000 people which is great.

The newest blog was going to be more around leadership and business in general.  For years, I have used two expressions to synthesize my approach to business.

1. Creative Rigor - This is my blend of right and left brain thinking.  I was classically trained as an architect (buildings not systems).  My biggest takeaways from architecture were (a) how to listen and capture requirements and (b) the fact that there is no right answer only an optimal answer.  When I blend this with my pre-disposition to math and my MBA training, I find that I approach problem solving very different than others.
2. Planned Spontaneity - This is my approach to consulting.  You have to be 2-3 steps ahead of your client and able to whiteboard out something real-time.  Ideally, you have already thought through the idea beforehand to understand the pros and cons.  Not easy, but it works great when you are ready.

So, I am going to start adding some of my musings and thought around business here.  I hope to someday publish them in a book, but that may be a ways off unless I can use this medium to capture and begin synthesizing the concepts. 

9 Biggest Myths of the Workplace (non-BPM)

One of my favorite bloggers (and authors and speakers) is Guy Kawasaki.  He does a great job and his latest blog is no different.  This is totally off topic for BPM, but I think it is always a topic that many of us think about - the workplace.

He highlights The Nine Biggest Myths of the Workplace based on the work of Penelope Trunk.  It talks about things like the glass ceiling being dead...and not because it's shattered but because no one cares for whats on the other side.  It talks about backstabbing not being what gets you ahead (although we all know that person for which it seems to).  It says the average person has 8 jobs before they are 30 (amazing).  I think you will like it.

Personality Typing In Venture Capital

Matt Winn, an associate at Chrysalis Ventures, writes a blog with many interesting comments. His blog also points you to several other young VCs who are blogging about different topics.

I thought his blog yesterday about using Predictive Index to assess management teams was interesting as is the original WSJ article about it.

Chrysalis is a very good VC firm that I talked with several times. They are very active in the healthcare space and their managing partner (David Jones) is the non-executive chairman of Humana (and son of the founder of Humana). I would recommend them highly.

Mgmt Tools (off subject)

This is a little off topic, but I get asked the question a lot about why the LinkedIn link is on the blog or about what tools I use to help me manage connections and information.  There are a lot out there, but I have stuck with three for the past few years.  I was about to add a fourth (Spinvox) which takes your voicemails, translates them to text, and e-mails them to you, but it doesn't work with my phone service right now. 

1. LinkedIn - This is a great professional version of Friendster or MySpace.  It allows you to post your profile and link to connections of yours.  It takes the whole concept of Six Degrees of Separation and makes it real.  I was skeptical at first, but I jumped in and uploaded my Outlook contacts.  When I found out that 50 of my friends already used the tool, I was hooked.  I introduced the tool to one friend, and within a month, he had 5,000 of his contacts "LinkedIn".  It has been great for networking and reconnecting.  And, There was a recent article in Business 2.0 that talked about LinkedIn finally getting over the 3M active user hump.   
2. Plaxo - I am sure I don't use this to the fullest, but it allows me to post my electronic business card and send automatic updates.  If two people have signed up for Plaxo, the service automatically updates your Outlook (or other service) with any changes to the person's card.  With all the job changes (internal and external) these days, this is very helpful.
3. Google desktop - Although I am a fairly organized person, I can't keep up with everything these days.  Not to mention that what seems like a good typology one day may not make sense a month from now or during a fire drill.  So I use Google's desktop tool which indexes your hard drive and allows you to keyword search every file you have and all the websites you have visited.  It is great.

So much for the digression, but I recommend all the tools.   

Innovation - IBM Study

I am a big believer that innovation is a critical part of any business strategy.  This has come into vogue in the past few years, but I have focused on this ever since I pursued a joint architecture / business education.  One site that I have followed for the past 18 months has been the Business Innovation Factory.  This morning, I was reading several things there, but the IBM CEO Study caught my attention.

1. It talks a lot about innovation from the outside in from customers, business partners, consultants, and trade groups.
2. Innovation is very focused on business model versus product innovation.

"It's very clear that CEOs today are looking at new kinds of innovation to drive substantial organizational change and business growth," says Ginni Rometty, Senior Vice President, IBM Enterprise Business Services. "It's not just about product innovation any more. It's about understanding how to innovate a business model, or an operational process, or management behavior.".  View IBM Global CEO Study 2006 Event Presentation.

Another article on the site that appeared in Forbes talks about service industry innovation using traditional product design concepts.  (See article)

All of this is relevant to BPM for two reasons: (1) process innovation is an area of real opportunity for many companies and is akin to business model innovation (just ask all the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies) and (2) there is lots of talk about using BPM to identify exceptions and notice trends that could create new product innovation opportunities. 

Art of Visualization

This is off topic, but wow.  Anyone who struggles with the business challenge of visualizing complex ideas will enjoy this.  Guy Kawasaki, whose blog I subscribe to, put out a blog today about the Art of Visualization.  In it, he provides a link to A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods which is a fascinating tool.