As a follow up to my last blog post, I thought I’d mention another of the four areas where valuable projects hang out: decreasing something. That’s right, not only can you achieve the pinnacles of success by making more, you can be equally effective in helping your company by making less. What a country! How can you add value by taking something away? Below are a few examples: Click To Continue Reading.. »

One of the four categories of creating valuable projects in your company is increasing something. Here are the most common increases which will garner you fame and fortune. Or at least a solid pat on the back:

• Profit – Obvious, but not always correct. Any project which increases revenue or decreases costs should increase profit; however, it doesn’t always work that way because 1) project value is overestimated, 2) project risk is underestimated, 3) system-wide impact has not been through through. You’re better off increasing Net Preference
• Revenue – Bring in more top-line dollars (or Euros or Yen or Rubles) by Click To Continue Reading.. »

When you hire a consultant, you only know if you’re paying a fair fee if you have some idea of what the project is worth to you. Unfortunately, you overestimate the contribution of your project to whatever your larger goal is and therefore you risk overestimating the value of your project.

By the way, this same principal applies to the projects and initiatives you do in-house: you overestimate their value. Why? Let’s go back to 1979 for a moment, when Michael Ross and Fiore Sicoly at the University of Waterloo, Canada wrote about egocentricity biases. Really, you need to know about these.

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When you hire a business consultant, coach or some other expert, don’t you wish that they would produce outstanding work every time? As a consultant (and, often, a consultant’s consultant), I know that consultants want to exceed your expectations on every project. Unfortunately for them and for you, they didn’t have the professor that taught Carnegie Mellon’s Pascal Mastery class.

Pity, or they would have learned the amazing lesson in this blog post.

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Every Project Has Risks

The work may take too long and miss an important deadline, or use more of your people’s time than you originally thought, or become irrelevant because your needs change, just to name a few.

Usually those risks are given a passing thought, at most, then dismissed prior to bringing in a consultant. Sometimes you voice a concern internally or to the outside expert.

Risk is Actually an Opportunity

Let’s say you ask the consultant, “How much of our people’s time will this project take?” The eager expert, sensing your worry, will Click To Continue Reading.. »