Reforming Project Management » commentary

Time for GM and Ford to Heed Jim Womack’s Advice

Hal — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:14:02 +0000

Two years ago Jim Womack wrote an open letter to the executives, employees, suppliers and investors of GM and Ford. I was so moved by the letter I reprinted it in whole. The US Federal Government is considering a bailout of these two auto makers. Some people are in fierce disagreement with that action preferring to see market forces determine winners and losers. Others are concerned for the millions of people who depend on their livelihood from the auto makers and their supply chains. The impact to the economy may be so dire that there may be no alternative to a bailout. I'll stay out of that argument.

Let's make the investment payoff.

If a bailout occurs, then it must come with conditions. The better business system has been winning in the marketplace. It's time to shift business systems…to adopt a lean way of managing the firms, not just lean production techniques. Womack says GM and Ford must make these changes:

Rewrite the social contract.
Introduce all of the elements of lean enterprise.

a product development process,
a supplier management process,
a customer management process,
an overarching enterprise management process, and
a production process from order to fulfillment.

Simplify market offerings.

Womack describes the sources of GM and Ford's woes along with his prescription for dealing with them. Let's make the investment payoff. Have a read: A Tale of Two Business Systems

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PMI Global Congress 2008 Highlights

Hal — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:46:09 +0000

Just a few highlights from the Project Management Congress for you. I attended a 6-hour working session on the Project Management Institute, PMI®, 4-year study on the value of investing in the discipline, practices, and training in project management. We followed that with a 75-minute private conversation with the two principal researchers, Mark Mullaly and Janice Thomas. In short, while only one of the 65 firms studied attempted to calculate an ROI, nearly every firm was able to identify real value. I'll share some of the details in a following post.

PMI Special Interest Groups are dead; long live Special Interest Groups.

Colin Powell was the keynote speaker on Sunday afternoon for a crowd of 3,000. That followed his Obama endorsement on Meet the Press Sunday morning. The general was there to speak about leadership. He challenged project managers to bring leadership to every project team. He kept our attention with one story after another and his great humor. I counted 4 standing ovations. I've ordered his book My American Journey.

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Read the rest of PMI Global Congress 2008 Highlights (164 words)

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Business 2.0 Is Dead…Long Live Fast Company!

Hal — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 03:11:57 +0000

I've been a long-time reader of Business 2.0. Good writing, timely articles, and clever presentation made this magazine great. Unfortunately, my view has been in the minority. Circulation has fallen steadily along with ad pages. A magazine can't keep publishing with that trend even when it is owned by Time, Inc.

Long live Fast Company!

I renewed my subscription mid-September and they processed my credit card. Two days later I read in the Wall Street Journal that Time would no longer publish B2.0. I feel swindled. Time is extending my Fortune subscription for one issue for each two remaining B2.0 issues. That doesn't make me happy, particularly since they took my money only a few weeks ago. One-for-one would be a fairer deal.

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Read the rest of Business 2.0 Is Dead…Long Live Fast Company! (90 words)

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Boston Globe Slams Construction Industry

Hal — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 02:30:59 +0000

Construction projects get a bad rep…a very bad rep. And the Boston Globe piles on with today's article The Industry that Time Forgot: Just Another Day at the Office for the Most Wasteful, Least Productive Industry in America

It's tough for me to comment on this article. I live in Boston. We've suffered major delays, overruns, inconveniences, and people lost their lives. It doesn't have to be this way. Companies have learned from the best operators in the world and have avoided these problems. In Massachusetts we have burdensome laws and practices. It's tough to do business with the state government. In my town no major project has finished on time or on budget. However, it can change. It must change. The industry knows what to do to change.

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Read the rest of Boston Globe Slams Construction Industry (145 words)

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One Last Story on Toyota (for February)

Hal — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 22:35:43 +0000

Toyota can't stay out of the press. If you've been reading the prior stories you know why. Well, I couldn't help myself. I just had to pass along one more story Why Toyota Is Afraid Of Being Number One appearing in Business Week.

"Chrysler communications chief Jason Vines said, "The thing I resent is Toyota wrapping themselves in the American flag." "We still employ more people and contribute more to the economy.""

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Read the rest of One Last Story on Toyota (for February) (78 words)

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$210,000,000 Is Enough to Soothe Any Ego

Hal — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 20:09:56 +0000

Wunderkind Bob Nardelli got fired today. Actually, the news reports say he resigned. While I haven't seen his contract, normally people don't get severance pay when they resign. In his case $210 million.

Bob has been running The Home Depot…into the ground. He's the same guy that thought he should replace Jack Welch as CEO of GE. Looks like Jack made a better decision selecting Jeff Immelt. The board at The Home Depot didn't.

Even bad leadership matters.

Leadership comes in many forms. I've found stories about Nardelli to show him as indifferent and elitist. Maybe he was or maybe not. It doesn't matter. His leadership, or anti-leadership, has produced really poor performance at the company that created the big box home improvement format. The Home Depot's board decision indicates they hold Nardelli accountable for those results. And that is the lesson for all of us.

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Read the rest of $210,000,000 Is Enough to Soothe Any Ego (124 words)

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A New Idea…Can I Face the Pain?

Hal — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 02:37:25 +0000

Article Series - Notes on Obsolete Project Management Theory

I read the following quote from Walter Bagehot in Time Magazine's end-of-year farewell to John Kenneth Galbraith.

"One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea."

The quote reminds me of the theory-trap we are in with projects. So with this posting I am updating my Notes on the Underlying Theory of Project Management is Obsolete.

While our tools are ever more sophisticated and there is more project management training, our project results languish. The new idea — projects are conducted in an unfolding network of commitments — challenges the very nature of what people do today in the project setting. The PMI is going to great lengths to teach people the old ideas.¹ In essence saying, "Just get good at doing what we've been telling you to do all along and your projects will come out just fine." Following that teaching with certification is producing a world-wide paradigm that is having the affect of blinding practitioners to alternative ideas (theories). In the face of that, the agilists are dealing with the pain of their new ideas; so are those adopting lean construction.(...)
Read the rest of A New Idea…Can I Face the Pain? (669 words)

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Someone Is Poised to Pass You By

Hal — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 19:16:33 +0000

Bullshit. Sorry, it's my reaction to the quotes in today's NY Times article, Toyota Is Poised to Supplant G.M. as World’s Largest Carmaker in the coming year. Read on and decide for yourself.

"If Toyota overtakes G.M., that is a very big deal," said Mark Hawkins, chairman of the United Automobile Workers union local at G.M.'s Flint truck plant.

Wake up Detroit! It's time we all learned from Toyota.

G.M. and the union need to work together to at least try to prevent Toyota from displacing G.M., Mr. Hawkins said, because he worries G.M. would never be able to take back the top spot after losing it. "Right now they've got a lot of momentum," Mr. Hawkins said of Toyota.

Representative John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who will probably become chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee next year, said Toyota's strength came in part because it did not have to pay the full cost of health care coverage, a major burden for Detroit companies, and because it has benefited from the strength of the Japanese yen.

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Read the rest of Someone Is Poised to Pass You By (158 words)

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Did the WSJ Get It Wrong about Lean and Taylor?

Hal — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 03:27:38 +0000

Mark Graban thinks so. His impassioned editorial at the Lean Blog is a must read. Mark takes on the common sense of management thinking. That common sense threatens all project management. There is nothing I can find to say that Mark hasn't already said better. Read WSJ's Wrong Conclusion on Frederick Taylor.

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Green Pays Off in Green for Adobe

Hal — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 22:09:06 +0000

Most of us know Adobe for its Acrobat PDF software. Did you know that the firm is green? Business 2.0 calls them The Greenest Office in America. And their efforts pay off. For a cumulative $1.1 million investment Adobe enjoys annual savings of almost $1 million. You won't get those returns in the market.

Lean thinking is closely tied to the green movement. The authors of Natural Capitalism claim lean ideas are the theory from which we can build a sustainable environment. Some of The Best 19 Pages on Lean Thinking are offered up in their book. Have a look. And when you're done, how about replacing one or two incandescent bulbs with CFLs?

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Wal-Mart Inspires Entrepreneur

Hal — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:59:10 +0000

Wal-Mart gets a bad rep for a lot of their actions, particularly their influence on small businesses. Might that be changing? FCNow reports one company joining WalMart's CFL campaign.
How many companies does it take to change a light bulb? One. A few weeks back I wrote of Walmart's initiative to sell 100,000,000 compact fluorescent lightbulbs, Will Wal-Mart Change the World Selling CFLs? Let’s Wonder…. It's an ambitious goal even for a firm the size of WalMart. However, to the extent they attract other players, 100,000,000 bulbs just might be a low hurdle.

Kristina Runciman, president of Lifeforce Glass, got inspired:

I was so inspired by the article by Charles Fishman on CFLs that my company is now sending one compact fluorescent lightbulb with every order. We are counting on each customer to try their free CFL and then replace their incandescent bulbs in their homes and businesses.

Great projects are invitiations for participation.

As a wholesaler of giftware, Kristina doesn't have a direct opportunity to benefit from her actions. She won't be making big sales of CFLs. She "signed on" to the larger project of taking care of our environment while taking care of our pocketbooks. Funny thing, Wal-Mart is part of the process. Kristina buys the give-away CFLs at Sam's Club. I can't imagine this was part of the WalMart plan, but what a nice by-product.

I'm liking Wal-Mart's project more and more. Great projects are invitiations for participation. They attract people to join. I'm so curious about how the project is going. Last week I visited the local Wal-Mart to just take a look at the lightbulb section. As reported in the Fast Company article, CFLs are prominently displayed at eye-level along with shelf cards detailing the savings these bulbs generate. Kudos to Wal-Mart and to Kristina for joining in!

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Read Jim Womack if You Want to Avoid Ford’s Fate

Hal — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 15:16:34 +0000

"Ford needs to remake itself once more, this time in the image of the company that copied Ford’s original system: Toyota."

James Womack is one of the key people¹ who introduced the world to the dominance of lean approaches over conventional business approaches. He continues to engage company leaders in discussions inviting and imploring them to adopt lean approaches to their business. One way he does that is with his regular emails to Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) members². In his latest email, The Lean Way Forward at Ford, Jim recounts Ford's historical contributions to lean and offers his opinion of how they came to their current fate. He finished that email this way:

"…my prescription for new Ford CEO Alan Mullaly is the same (as it was for former CEO Jac Nassar): Fundamentally rethink the supplier management system. Fundamentally rethink the product development system. And fundamentally rethink the production system from order to raw materials and from raw materials to delivery, with special attention to the information management system. (Much can still be learned from Ford’s Mazda subsidiary, which became an able pupil of Toyota after a crisis in 1973.) Above all, fundamentally rethink what mangers do and how they do it in order to regain the gemba consciousness that originally took Ford to world dominance. In brief, Ford needs to remake itself once more, this time in the image of the company that copied Ford’s original system: Toyota."

None of us have to repeat the fate of the once-mighty Ford. Not on the factory floor; not in product development; not for those of us who make our livings in project-based firms. Getting lean is no longer an option.

Norman Bodek, founder of Productivity Press, translated and published over 300 Japanese-language books including Taiichi Ohno's and Shigeo Shingo's. The other person is Jeffrey Liker, author of the easy-to-read book on lean The Toyota Way. [ ⇑ back ]
Visit http://www.lean.org to subscribe. Use "Member Sign-up" at the bottom right corner of the homepage to get a free subscription and gain immediate access to all the valuable content on the LEI web site about implementing lean. [ ⇑ back ]

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