Articles by Rich

I recently read an article “Ted Talks are all Lying to You” wherein the author was opining that our standard literature around creativity and innovation in the business domain is complete rubbish. The article is an interesting read, but at the end of the day, creativity is not what most people in business do – they do opportunity. Opportunity is all about taking the stuff that we already know, do and have, and finding ways to get paid more for it.

Innovation and Opportunity

Innovation in business often comes from opportunity. As we are “doing opportunity” we see a way to get paid, that we currently don’t do, exactly. A client has a need that we can’t fill. A client has an interesting but awkward use for an existing product that leads us to make a new product more attenuated to that use. We see an opportunity to reduce cost (increase profitability) by radically simplifying a production process.Continue Reading

Seth Godin’s Post: Your Alphabet   is a reminder to me about something that I thought while writing these two posts describing the aspects of talent IT Staffing Talent and IT Staffing Strategy Considerations.

These two posts talk about talent and about the impact of talent on IT Staffing Strategy.  Seth’s post reminded me of one definition or description of talent that I had removed from the prior posts because it didn’t flow or fit.  Sometimes talent is the ability to take skills or abilities that one has and combine, manipulate, repurpose, or bend them to accomplish something one does not have the “accustomed” abilities to do.Continue Reading

This post is for those of you who are having to plan your own activities, or the activities of others for the first time.  Or maybe you just want an easier faster way to think about creating a plan.  Maybe you want something simple – because all the complex project management body of knowledge ideas or other methodologies are making your head explode.  For whatever reason you want to learn to make plans quickly, simply and easily – this post has your name on it.

Remember planning has three basic steps:

What needs to be done?  In what order?  On what schedule?

Everything after that is some form of optimization.  Since we are not optimizing, we can be simple, quick and easy.Continue Reading