by Travis.Anderson
Guest post from Travis Anderson
According to Jack Welch, strategy is very straightforward in life. On page 165 of Winning, he says, “You pick a general direction and implement like hell.” And again on page 167 he says, “Strategy, then, is simply finding the big aha and setting a broad direction, putting the right people behind it, and then executing with an unyielding emphasis on continual improvement.”
So much of what we do as project managers is to make winners out of our people on projects.
To be on time, on schedule, and within scope would define a winning project.
Is Mr. Welch correct with his philosophy “Its all in the sauce”?
Can strategy be that simple?
Tell us about your experiences with strategy and tactics on your projects.
6 Comments
Travis Anderson September 28 2009 21:15 pm
Josh,
My son said something the other day that made me laugh. He said, "Eureka, I invented the word Eureka." Is that how the big aha comes about? Also, in terms of strategy, what are some of your best strategies for obtaining the right people and continuous improvement? Or is this more a question of tactic?
One last thing, how do you view the relationship between strategy and tactic on projects?
Pick the best context that suits your experience. I am interested to read your response.
Bill DuncanSeptember 28, 2009 4:32 pm
I’ll quote my friend Vic Rosenberg, “I avidly avoid using the term strategy because it causes arguments. And the problem is not that others are wrong as much as that everyone disagrees and all think they are right — which would make my definition just additional Balkanization.”
Travis Anderson September 28 2009 21:09 pm
Bill,
Strategy is definitely a term that generates broad discussions. I tend to think that on projects, we often are more tactical than strategic. Can you elaborate on the tactical aspect of projects? You can select a context most suitable to your experience to explains tactic in relation to project management.
I am interested to read your response.
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Josh NankivelSeptember 28, 2009 11:44 am
Jack’s statement is very broad and perhaps a bit too simplistic. I read this book a few years ago so my memory of specifics will probably fail…
“simply finding the big aha” – it seems to me like this is a big component of strategy, and this statement assumes it’s so easy that companies will obviously know it, perhaps intuitively? A lot of institutions thought that mortgage-backed securities were the “big aha”….
I like the part about having the right people and continuous improvement. What I think Jack is missing in this statement is structuring a system of incentives within the organization that guide everyone towards the execution of strategy. Perhaps he discusses incentives in the rest of the book, I don’t remember.
So many organizations I see spend a lot of time and money on “strategic planning” and then implement things like contests in a call center where teams compete and locations compete, usually on one-factor metrics like average call time. The amount of negative side-effects that come from things like this are proof to me that no one was thinking strategically about incentives.