New Agora

A great piece of investigative reporting from Bob Lewis. He discovered the Loch Ness Monster a SAP implementation project that finished ahead of schedule by the Japanese company Daiwa House Industry.

The lessons are entirely relevant to any complex project implementation.

If you are interested in systems thinking but don't read the Vanguard Newsletter penned by John Seddon, you should really start.

Vanguard is a UK-based consultancy that teaches companies how to switch from command and control structures to taking a systems approach to management. Recently I came across a nice summary of one of the key concepts expounded -- the need to aim for efficiency of flow rather than efficiency of scale:

With the eruption of another holy war on actKM, this time on the need to focus on networks rather than content, I can't help but feel that people are missing the point.

All of these things are important, but the primary focus always needs to be on how effectively the organisation is solving its primary problem, ie why it exists. I've previously discussed my model for a problem solving pattern:

This is a presentation that I did for the Ark Group seminar "Strategic Email Management" back in March 2007. The presentation deliberately steers away from any mention of specific Web 2.0 applications (eg no Facebook or Twitter). However, I think it's still pretty relevant today as a useful intro on how an organisation can change its mindset around email.