Results Oriented Project Management

February 28, 2012
The traditional project term hierarchy as defined by the Project Management Institute is this: (Program)     Project         Phase             Activity                 (Task) They are defined thusly: (Program) – a group of related projects Project – a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result Phase – a collection of logically related [...]

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Rethinking Unlimited Access Level Agreements

February 23, 2012
While watching Rory Sutherland’s Zeitgeist presentation for the 20th time, I was struck (finally or again) by his story about Spotify and how they have not gotten much traction with their offer of unlimited downloads per month. He suggests that they change it to some absurdly high number like 180 songs a month. Sutherland reasons [...]

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There is no such thing as losing to “No Decision”

January 24, 2012
While teaching Sage Consulting Academy last week, I had what my mentor would call a BFO – blinding flash of the obvious – a sale is never really lost to “No decision.” First, “No” is a decision and therefore, by definition is a … Second, while a prospect may not select either you or a [...]

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#irony

January 20, 2012
I was quite amused yesterday when I received this follow notice today from Twitter. Special thanks to fellow VeraSage Senior Fellow Michelle Golden for the idea for the title of this post.

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New Edition of Flawless Consulting

January 17, 2012
Those of you who follow this blog regularly will no doubt recall that I am an ardent adherent of Peter Block and his works. If you are also, I have some terrific news. Peter has recently published a new (third) edition of his seminal work Flawless Consulting. I am thrilled to add it to my [...]

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Too Many Notes

January 16, 2012
VeraSage Founder, Ron Baker has often used Snow White and Seven Dwarfs to illustrate the problem of applying efficiency to knowledge work. “A LEAN six sigma guru would have advised Walt Disney to make Snow White and the Three Dwarfs as it would have improved efficiency by over 50 percent,” he intones. Recently I was [...]

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If you say “Value Billing” you are already wrong

January 13, 2012
So today, I have heard or read the phrase "value billing" about a dozen times and I decided to write a rant post about it, only to discover that I had already written one almost three years ago. Bottom line, if you say "value billing" you are already wrong.

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On Paid Search vs Social Media Spending

January 11, 2012
Fellow Sage team member Greg Tirico posted an interesting link to an article which suggests that small and medium businesses are beginning to favor social media spending over paid search. I have always thought of paid search (and even SEO) as a mistake in the consulting profession because it tends to lead to poor customer [...]

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New Addition to Ed’s List

January 9, 2012
In December, I created Ed’s List - a a list of IT (information technology) whom I consider to be true professional knowledge firms. Today, I am pleased to add another name to the List – Plus Computer Solutions in Burnaby, BC, Canada. As of January 1, 2012, they are no longer keeping timesheets! Said Wendy [...]

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Hey, I’ll Take It (a victory for on premises)

December 22, 2011
In July, I wrote a post for this blog decrying the use of the phrase “on premise” to describe traditional software that is deployed at the customer’s location. I posited that this should rightly be referred to as “on premises” with the final s in tact. Late yesterday, there is news of a victory of [...]

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