Ever fired a customer? Tough, isn't it? I've seen businesses flounder because they couldn't do this.

Agile vs waterfall? It's one of the most common questions I get from business leaders. Building software WITH the customer seems so obvious. It's a wonder it took the industry decades to figure that out. So Agile is sexy as the way to Lean.

Have you asked all your customers lately why they care about you? Why they bought, and why they continue to pay you?

Can we agree that your business performs better when everyone's approach is thoughtful, somewhat consistent, and continuously improved? And that making the necessary changes is not easy?

"How do we know we're doing enough?" is a question I often get from business leaders. My response is to start by making sure you're not doing too much.

Of course your systems restrict innovation - that's how you built them.

Anticipation is the key to flexibility.

A business runs well when many concurrent activities are in simpatico and interdependencies align.

Your customer is paying you to get something done for them. If your product is hard to use, you haven't solved their problem.

If you’ve shipped a product, created software or designed a business process, you’ll likely have experienced the 10x quality rule. I’m not aware of any scientific proof, but I’ve seen the empirical evidence hundreds of times.

There’s a common belief that the world is changing faster than ever before. Look a little deeper and it turns out that’s always been the belief. What we have more of today is options. Alternative ways to get something done. That means we all have to make more decisions every day.

Nature wired us to see threats before we see opportunities—it's the traditional way to survive. But that makes it really easy to find another excuse to avoid taking a risk.

Big deadlines and complex endeavours are not good bedfellows. Conflict exists between doing the right thing and doing SOME thing by the Big Date.

It takes all kinds to make a business work, many skillsets. Diversity rules.

But customer engagement is one skill that we should all polish.

Two types of activity occur in the course of any initiative. Decisions are made and Actions are taken. Make the right decisions and you’ll take the right actions. Actions give rise to new questions which require decisions.

If you're pitching something, asking for a decision, you'd better own the conversation. If you're being pitched, that's the last thing you want.

I have a pet hate for "best practices". Not the concept, but the term. There are areas in every business where being the best is valuable. But most often, better is good enough.

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of helping a few Wall Street firms with their first forays into big data. Fast forward 10 years, and the larger financial institutions have figured out the value

A couple of years ago, I was asked to comment on the implementation approach of a large client. They wanted to know why "everything took so long" and, more importantly, what to do about it.

One of the great pleasures of my career has been to contribute to thousands of collaborations - efforts where we've pulled together teams of experts to solve problems large and small. I've experimented with many practices. Some worked and some didn't, but that's how you learn, right?

I was skiing in the woods last weekend and noticed some interesting paw prints in the snow. This always brings to mind the wisecrack about not having to outrun the bear. You just need to outrun your slowest companion.