Rohit Prabhakar : Leadership and Management Blog » Management

Why almost 80% of corporate strategies fail?

Rohit Prabhakar — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 18:04:11 +0000

No doubt strategic thinking has a great importance for the overall growth of the organization. As very well said “Men without vision shall perish” which holds so true about every organization too. Having a strategic thinking that maps to the vision is an absolute necessity. I don’t think if a company can ever succeed if it lacks either the vision or a strategy.

I have read and observed that many times companies and divisions that have all the required strategy but still fail. Even they have an executive team that think the very best but still they fail. In my personal experience I have seen that the reason was a disconnect between the thinking and execution. In other words there was a huge mismatch in the walk and talk! Most of the times I have seen the executives having a thought process that thinking is their game. Once they are done just through the strategy map to the lower management. Let the lower management have a plan to execute on the strategy.

Now comes the turn of the lower management and they start executing.Many projects are brought to life and many changed based on their limited understanding. Priorities are assigned to all the projects again based on their interpretation of the strategy map. Not just the wrong interpretation of strategy but also other factors like their own technology priorities, sale priorities, client priorities, priorities of the respective group etc.

Nothing wrong with this except that there comes a disconnect! Strategy makers do not understand how the projects in execution fulfill the strategy and match to the vision of the company while the execution teams keeps on spending huge amount of effort on projects that are not aligned strategically to the vision of the company. A huge amount of resources are wasted on strategy and execution in this manner.

I know nobody is trying to do it with an intent to go on a wrong path but still it happens every time very year. Just in USA, companies spend billions of dollars on training the top level management about the best strategies etc. But every year less than 20% strategies are successfully put to implementation.

How to fix this issue? Any thoughts?Any comments?

Creating Project Plan in MS Project

Rohit Prabhakar — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 20:39:57 +0000

Every time I create a new MPP, I ask this question to myself “How and where to start?”. I very well remember the first time I created a Microsoft project plan and I was struggling on strategy to put a plan in place. There was nobody to mentor me. It is very essential that we start right. Here is what I found very useful for me:

Identify tasks and Create task list
Create a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
Group the tasks based on functional or criteria in WBS
Estimate every task in the WBS
Then move all this information to Microsoft Project Plan or any other project management tool or you can even do step 1-4 inside the tool. I personally love to do with paper and pencil and then move it to software.

There is a very good tutorial on creating Microsoft Project Plan with the similar approach at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/create-a-project-plan-in-5-easy-steps-HA001136153.aspx

Thanks

Rohit Prabhakar, PMP

Difference between Leadership and Management

Rohit Prabhakar — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 20:38:35 +0000

Management: Set of processes that aim to take an organization and make it functional as it was designed for.The processes like planning, budgeting, organizing, customer relationship, sales, automation, staffing, problem solving etc.

Leadership: The ultimate aim of leadership is to visualize and effectively lead the organization to the next level. Processes like creating the vision of future, strategy to get there, communicate to people in a way that they buy into it and motivate those people to implement it, create and update the systems that managers use to manage.

Hopefully you will not confuse the both with each other now and be sure that when recruiting for senior executive positions you are just not hiring managers but more importantly Leaders too!

Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

Rohit Prabhakar — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 19:00:17 +0000

A must read blog by Heidi Grant Halvorson at Harvard Business Review. The following are the 9 things:

Get specific.
Seize the moment to act on your goals.
Know exactly how far you have left to go.
Be a realistic optimist.
Focus on getting better, rather than being good.
Have grit.
Build your willpower muscle.
Don’t tempt fate.
Focus on what you will do, not what you won’t do.

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/02/nine_things_successful_people.html?cm_sp=most_widget-_-default-_-Nine+Things+Successful+People+Do+Differently

Enjoy!!!!!

Never Give Up your dream

Rohit Prabhakar — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 21:04:40 +0000

Why? Read this powerful real life story that I have read in many books. Here is the story from book “Think & Grow Rich” in section named “Three Feet & Fifty Cents”

One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another.

An uncle of RU Darby was caught by the “gold fever” in the gold-rush days, and went west to dig and grow rich. He had never heard that more gold has been mined from the brains of people than has ever been taken from the earth. He staked a claim and went to work with pick and shovel. The going was hard, but his lust for gold was definite.

After weeks of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of the shining ore. He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. Quietly, he covered up the mine, retraced his footsteps to his home in Williamsburg, Maryland, and told his relatives and a few neighbors of the “strike.” They got together money for the needed machinery, had it shipped.

The uncle and Darby went back to work the mine.

The first car of ore was mined, and shipped to a smelter. The returns proved they had one of the richest mines in Colorado! A few more cars of that ore would clear the debts. Then would come the big killing in profits.

Down went the drills! Up went the hopes of Darby and Uncle! Then something happened. The vein of gold ore disappeared! They had come to the end of the rainbow, and the pot of gold was no longer there! They drilled on, desperately trying to pick up the vein again—all to no avail.

Finally, they decided to QUIT. They sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars, and took the train back home. Some “junk” men are dumb, but not this one! He called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer advised that the project had failed, because the owners were not familiar with “fault lines.” His calculations showed that the vein would be found JUST THREE FEET FROM WHERE THE DARBYS HAD STOPPED DRILLING!

That is exactly where it was found! The “Junk” man took millions of dollars in ore from the mine, because he knew enough to seek expert counsel before giving up.

Uplift and Inspire

Rohit Prabhakar — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 20:05:39 +0000

I watched them tearing a building down,
A gang of men in a busy town,
With a ho heave ho and a lusty yell,
They swung a beam and a side wall fell
And I asked the foremen, “Are these men skilled,
The men he’d hire if he had had to build?”
He gave a laugh and said, “No indeed!
Just a common laborer is all I need.
I can easily wreck in a day or two
What builders have taken a year to do.”
I asked myself as I went my way,
Which of these roles have I tried to play.
Am I a builder who works with care,
Measuring life with rule and square?
Or am I a wrecker as I walks the town ,
Content with the labor of tearing down.
-Unknown Author

I read this wonderful poem and could not stop myself from sharing this. From a book titled “8 Attributes of Great Achievers” by Cameron C. Taylor

Journey to be a PMP was 10 days long!

Rohit Prabhakar — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:04:04 +0000

I have been reading various forums for a long time and finally decided to get PMP done few weeks ago. Here is my schedule of action with exact dates:

August 19 2010:::: Enrolled for the PMStudy class in Milwaukee, WI, USA

August 20 2010:::: Not yet started the online study material

August 21 2010:::: Started with the online study material. The only thing I did that day was to memorize the process chart and the formulas provided by PMStudy. (Excellent chart from PMStudy)

August 22, 2010:::: Practiced the process chart only once

August 23, 2010: PMStudy class 8 AM to 6 PM (I had an excellent coach, Mr.Mike Tomaszewski , PMP. Learning was fun!), followed by 3 hrs of study at home (same as taught in class and few practice tests provided in the course)

August 24, 2010:::: PMStudy class 8 AM to 6 PM, followed by 3 hrs of study at home (same as taught in class and few practice tests provided in the course)

August 25, 2010:::: PMStudy class 8 AM to 6 PM

August 26, 2010:::: PMStudy class 8 AM to 3 PM, followed by 5 hrs of study at home (all processes and few practice tests provided in the course)

August 27, 2010:::: Reread all the important as marked as instructed by Mike in the PMStudy book. Took 2 practice test ( 200 question, provided by PMStudy). Practiced the Process Chart and formulas 2 times. Checked ITTOs for Risk, Procurement and Quality. Watched a movie.

August 28, 2010:::: Took 1 practice test ( 200 question, provided by PMStudy). Practiced the Process Chart and formulas 1 time. Checked ITTOs for Risk, Procurement and Quality once again. Watched a 2 movies (1 in noon and 1 evening!@home). Got to bed at 10 (As advised by Mike and PMStudy, 12 hrs rest and no study before the exam)

August 29, 2010: Reached the Prometric testing center @ 8:45 AM. Test started at 9:30, completed 1st round with 75 marked for review in 2:15. Then took 1:15 to review all 75 and finally the rest of the time to re-review the marked ones that I was super confused about. System had to force time out for me ) and then the blank screen came………It was the worst thing that could have happened to me..I was shivering…and then instead of the result come a survey….I start shivering more…Once I was done with the survey……it published….Congratulations! Passed…blah….blah…blah…

Lessons Learnt:

12 hrs of no-study and good rest before the exam is highly important.
Positive thinking is must.. All these days I was saying to myself that I am getting it done ( I have read all the LL and everyone suggested 2-4 months of disciplined preparation. I knew I was not going that route and I was going to pass. I have been practicing Project Management for such a long and I was confident I could do it in 10 days)
Forget about what you do or have done in Project Management in your job. Think the PMI way only. Majority of the processes that we follow in our jobs are not what PMI teaches. Remember PMI teaches the best project management principles as per their standards and not yours.
Memorize process chart
Memorize ITTO (at least Risk, Quality and procurement)
Memorize formulas
Read and understand the “Professional Conduct and Ethics” chapter.
Take breaks to cool off your brain during the exam. (Take some energy drinks. I took 1 at the start and 1 in the break)
Don’t spend more than 60 seconds on every question. If very long/confusing/unknown mark it for review and come later BUT choose one of the options that seems to be close to right (so that if u have no time to review at least you have 25% probability of getting it right. 25% is better than 0%)
Take the ear plugs given by the center and plug your ears.
Used PMBOK for reference only in case of confusion (I only and only read the material provided by PMStudy)
Hang loose and take the test…the worst that can happen is you can fail but u can reappear too (in my case I had a money back guarantee ;o)

My humble opinion about the test: “Questions were very easy but options for answer were extremely confusing! If you don’t know the processes for sure you cannot guess the right one.”

Please feel free to reach me using the comments for any queries. I will be glad if I could be of any help in your journey to be a PMP.

Wish you the best of luck!

Rohit Prabhakar, PMP, Certified Six Sigma Green Belt

NOTE: Please use comments section to reach me out for any questions regarding PMP. I receive many emails daily asking almost similar questions. If you can leave a comment, I will surely reply and this will help many others who have a similar questions. Thanks for your interest!

If you are looking for PMP Providers’ review please go to

http://www.rohitprabhakar.com/2010/02/14/pmp-provider-review/

Disclosure: I don’t have any personal or financial relation with PMStudy.

SCRUM: Scalability by SCRUM OF SCRUMS

Rohit Prabhakar — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:01:19 +0000

Scrum has been successfully used for projects with 500+ team members lots of time. As SCRUM can only last for 15 minutes and some other similar rules hence in order to scale the SCRUM for bigger team we can use SCRUM OF SCRUMS. Based on the type of work the scrum team is constituted for every 7 to 10 team members having a Scrum master and the Product Owner. After the first lever team SCRUMS we have SCRUM of SCRUMS and there could also be more level of SCRUM OF SCRUMS. Please read an excellent article on Scaling Scrums at Scrum Alliance

The scrum of scrums meetings can be scaled indefinitely through multiple layers.

SCRUM:Some facts and resources

Rohit Prabhakar — Mon, 17 May 2010 17:23:05 +0000

Other facts about Scrum

The scrum methodology originated in 1993 at Easel Corp by Jeff Sutherland
Ken Schwaber presented Scrum at OOPSLA 96 with Sutherland
Ken Schwaber and Mike Cohn Co-founded Scrum Alliance in 2002
Used by all major companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, IBM, Siemens, John Deere, Time Warner, Turner Broadcasting, BBC and many more..
Used for software projects, life critical system, mobile phones, websites, Satellite controlled soft wares, support projects…..

For More Information

SCRUM: Artifacts

Rohit Prabhakar — Thu, 13 May 2010 19:43:34 +0000

Product Backlog

The product backlog is a document that contains the list of all desired work on the project. All these entries have an overall description, priority based on business value and rough estimates specified. This document is owned by the Product Owner and he/she sets the business value for each item. While the team is responsible for updating the development estimates in the document. This document is re-prioritized at the start of each and every sprint.

Sprint Backlog

Sprint Backlog is a team document that is used to plan how the features will be implemented. In this document the team breaks the features into tasks. Normally these tasks are four to sixteen hours of work. If the task has an associated effort of more than 16 hrs it is broken down into a small task. The tasks are never assigned, the team member voluntarily choose the tasks as per the priority and their skills. The Sprint Backlog is owned by the team. The overall outcome of this document can be visualized as a TO DO arranged according to the business value.

Sample Sprint Backlog

Burn down

The Burn Down chart is used to display the pending work in the sprint backlog. The burn down chart provides the visual representation of the overall progress of the Sprint. This is updated daily and is visible to the world.