Some years ago, our company supplied billing services for a mid-sized telecom provider. It was old technology, and we were very interested in migrating them over to a new platform we’d just begun to offer. They were referenceable and complimentary of our work with them. The IT group, our liaison, was happy to set up a meeting with the various groups that would be involved in a decision to change platforms.

At that meeting we learned the other groups didn’t hold us in such high esteem. Not only… Continue

I've only had the chance to read the abstract, but the doctoral dissertaton of Heather Carmack, of the Scripps College of Communication of Ohio University, looks like a treasure trove of insight on mistakes, apologies, the health care system, use of narratives and sensemaking. I I can't wait to read the other 352 pages (!).… Continue

The title might seem fundamental but as a manager, I had a really hard time dealing with this fact. Past success seemed to be a powerful screen hiding current challenges. We have built many products and executed many projects successfully, some even with certain components not tried before. Trying to emulate the same in every assignment, I made this terrible mistake of relying heavily upon "averages" of past data to set expectations for current and future projects unmindful of the fact that the… Continue

Fred Wilson's A VC blog is a great source of information on investing and venture capital. And it's one of the few blogs where the comments are consistently a source of great insight. Today Fred posted a story and thoughts on the topic of failure:

Failure

Barack Obama said this in his "bac… Continue

In late May 09 I was invited to be the change manager on a big project in Sydney. I would be sub-contracting to a company I used to work for, and they knew that change was not their specialty. Normally I would 'pass' on these tasks, but things were pretty quiet.

The client was a medium size military support organisation with a history of poor performance, low staff engagement and sub-standard customer service. They were in the midst of something of a crisis. They had been directed to substantia… Continue