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Say "no"

I recently read an interesting collection of Steve Jobs quotes assembled by Bruce Temkin. One in particular caught my attention;

• "And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important."

This notion is perhaps the hardest concept to implement for many organizations. Focusing on what is really important is hard because it requires groups of people to prioritize opportunities, and further to define the criteria for deciding about what is important. More how we structure decisions like this.

Why don't more executive teams focus on "things that are really important?" In our experience, this kind of focus tends to constrain their future options. They prefer to have all their "balls in the air" at once to improve the chances that some will succeed. Or at least this is what they tell us. This way, one can't be accused of making the wrong choices. The logic continues, "Why limit my options?" Yet all those "options" suck up valuable resources and distract focus.

But Jobs was right; saying no, killing projects, focusing finite resources on a few things, and achieving expectations against "unreasonable" goals is in fact a portfolio strategy that worked/works. He proved it.

Related

Get rid of the crappy stuff

Steve Jobs best quotes (WSJ)

Un-Bridges

Problem: Create a means to get across a waterway (without getting wet)

Solution: Build an un-bridge

I love the solution that RO&AD Architecten came up with (above) for the Municipality of Bergen op Zoom in the Netherlands. It is a great example of looking at the problem differently and of not using “conventional wisdom” to solve a problem. Their site is as clever as their bridge.

Why What How Decisions

Simon Sinek’s “start with why” concept works well to describe the three elements of a decisionAccelerator model. 

Get Rid of the Crappy Stuff

A consistent and fundamental problem we see in our practice is too many projects and not enough resources (people, materials, equipment, and money). Why?

Each project has revenue associated with it. This revenue is part of a portfolio of projects. The revenue is needed to justify the expenses (capex and opex). The more projects in the portfolio... the more potential revenue, so the logic goes.

Cut projects... then "the business plan does not work anymore." So the projects stay, even some that are past their market window, causing low/no ROI at best when they finally reach the market. Yet these "dogs" continue to suck valuable resources from the portfolio. Rarely do we see the project portfolio rationalized with the available resources. This is too scary for most companies.

Challenge your assumptions...to get breakthroughs

 

We use a process called Challenge to facilitate breakthroughs in thinking with teams, such as accelerating a schedule or finding a way to reduce costs in a system.

The process we use was derived from Edward de Bono's "Lateral Thinking" concepts. His book is a must read on the subject of creative thinking. We have extended his idea and used it to get teams to step outside their paradigms and find alternative ways of approaching problems, such as how to pull six months out of a schedule that, on the surface, seems impossible.

It starts by listing assumptions, boundaries, dominant ideas, avoidance factors, polarizations, and essential factors about the project. We have a variety of techniques for facilitating this, depending on the team make-up.

 

What, Want, How

In this presentation I’ll discuss a decision modeling concept we’ve developed that is based on voice-of-the-customer prioritization models created with our clients and their customers.

We call this “What, Want, How, and How Much.” Many problems can be seen from this simple metric. The order of these are important, which you will see later.

Focus, focus, focus... you can't do it all (Part C)

In the previous two screencasts (see links below) about the “Project Portfolio” I described the process of project portfolio prioritization using constraints. In this screencast called “Part C” I’ll introduce the time dimension to the modeling process. We still need to select the best project mix to maximize benefit in order to meet our objectives, but in this next step we’ll consider how resources are used over time. This differs from my first two screencasts in this series where we looked at resources without consideration for when projects start and how they interact over time.

Focus, focus, focus... you can't do it all (Part B)

In the previous screencast “Project Portfolio -- (Focus, focus, focus... you can't do it all -- Part A)” I described the process of project portfolio prioritization using constraints. Specifically, Cost and Risk factors to re-prioritize the portfolio. In this screencast called “Part B” I will show you the third constraint type using Resources. We’ll deal with the same problem statement, “How to prioritize projects based on a limitation of resources.” We need to select the best project mix to maximize benefit in order to meet our objectives.

Focus, focus, focus... you can't do it all (Part A)

Project Portfolio is a discussion of how to prioritize projects, when resources are finite and you need to select the best portfolio of projects to maximize benefit, or in other words, “Those projects that give you the biggest bang for the buck.” How do you prioritize projects when resources are finite?

What does it cost you to be late?

What is the cost of delay? It grew out of our best-practice research, where we observed successful new product development teams using various methods to quantify the cost of schedule delay.