January, 2009

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21
Jan 09

Ask The Question

Doing Something Different posts about learning:

learning isn’t about facts, despite what you may think. Ask any decent PhD supervisor and they will tell you that the heart of learning is in the question.

Here at Project Oriel, the subtext that drives me to scan some 40,000 posts a year (!!) and post about embracing change is a pretty simple question: How can we do ___ better? I ask it about everything: How can we run projects better? How can we make CRM software better? How can we respond to customers better? How can I empty the dishwasher more efficiently? 

What questions did you ask in 2008? What are you going to ask in 2009?

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19
Jan 09

Toyota’s Success

Jim at the Business of IT writes The Secret To Toyota’s Success Lies In Its Corporate Culture:

Here’s the part that so many companies that study Toyota miss: at Toyota they don’t believe that efficiency by itself can guarantee that Toyota will be a success. Instead, Toyota believes that its long-term success lies in its workers. It believes that the wisdom of its workers is what will allow it to improve.

Since its workers are its knowledge repositories, Toyota takes the time to invest in its workers and in its organizational capabilities. This is not a one-way street. Instead, Toyota is also open to new ideas no matter where they come from: production, development, sales, etc.

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17
Jan 09

Power of Open Source

From the release notes:

The real reason Coltrane is such a huge leap forward is because the community was so involved with every step of the process. Over 150 people contributed code directly to the release, our highest ever, with many tens of thousands more participating in the polls, surveys, tests, mailing lists, and other feedback mechanisms the WordPress dev team used in putting this release together.

This is why open source is such an amazing thing. Imagine what the corporate bill would be to hire a team of 150 highly talented, motivated and productive employees — just for one single release. Now go look at how many significant releases they have kicked out this year.

I think this open source thing is here to stay.

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15
Jan 09

Future of CRM

destinationCRM wrote:

Hoping to end the merry-go-round of flawed CRM, Leishman turned to a new option—open-source CRM. “I was intrigued with the whole concept,” he recalls. “I wanted to use this technology so I could customize it…and also have it Web-based so I wouldn’t have to rely on terminal services or any other remote assistance-type software.”

CEO of GOTW rated CRM’s based on two criteria:

  1. A flurry of recent activity online:  ”If there was little activity, obviously there’d be no community support to enhance or add more features”
  2. A lot of downloads, because popularity increased the chance of long term support.

“I looked at some off-the-shelf products a year ago…but they cost more than what I’ve spent on development so far to do just a third of what our system does.”

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13
Jan 09

Sins of Solutions

Matthew E. May, author of Elegant Solutions: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation, writes in his paper “Mind of the Innovator: Taming the Traps of Traditional Thinking” [pdf] about the Sins of Solutions.

There are some good stories in there, I particularly liked those accompanied by sin #6 Complicating, and sin #7 Stifling. A good quick read when you have the time.

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