Archive for May, 2008

Learning from The Elegant Solution

Two years ago I read Matthew May’s book The Elegant Solution. It’s a description of how to create an organization that day-after-day is recognized by the innovation that it creates.

The book is based on the time Matthew spent with the University of Toyota. I’ve reread the book to prepare for a Study Action Team™¹ that I am leading for a hospital that is being designed and constructed. Toyota is best known as the world’s best manufacturer. But even more important to their long-term success, Toyota knows how to do projects.

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© 2008 Hal, Reforming Project Management. |
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Read Robert Sutton’s Blog

Learn from a Stanford d.School prof. Robert Sutton has a great weblog Work Matters and he’s the author of The Knowing-Doing Gap and The No Assholes Rule.

© 2008 Hal, Reforming Project Management. |
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Clarke Says, Multi-Tasking Is Evil, I Agree

I won’t bore you with all the references to how multi-tasking produces waste. But do understand, the company policy to have very high utilization of staff creates the requirement for multi-tasking. Full utilization is not sustainable. Until you can lower utilization, thereby creating slack, you won’t be learning and innovating. You can’t be lean.

Clarke Ching, writing for Sticky Minds, uses a simple exercise to show just how evil multi-tasking is. Do the exercise for yourself and then have your boss do it. It goes like this:

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© 2008 Hal, Reforming Project Management. |
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