Business Strategy Archives – Page 38 of 38

2 Jun 2008

Howe’s That?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:40:59-06:00June 2nd, 2008|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams|

The C.D. Howe Institute posted a report saying that too many Canadians have inadequate savings and pension plans for an adequate retirement. About 3.5 million workers have no workplace pension plans and 5.5 million households (i.e. 1-2 workers in each household) have retirement investments that will yield insufficient retirement incomes. The goal is 50 to 70 percent replacement of your pre-retirement income.

Compounding the problem are the very high management fees associated with retail investment products which come off the top of your returns.

According to the report, the solution is a supplementary pension plan for Canada.

In “The New Retirement” […]

30 May 2008

Pro-Appreciatic Cultures

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:41:07-06:00May 30th, 2008|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Software Development|

Does your organization create and promote a culture where there is respect and appreciation?

It’s very easy to slip into habit of being critical.

When a client is changing software specifications at the eleventh hour it’s very easy to focus on how they should have known better. But just maybe we should be thanking them for making the overall product better.

When reviewing the work of a coworker or subordinate, it’s very easy to focus on the mistakes instead of the things that were done well. Sure, the mistakes need to be fixed in many cases, but the real work […]

28 May 2008

Angry People are Different

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:41:16-06:00May 28th, 2008|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

Seth Godin raises an interesting point in his post.

Dealing with an angry person can be an opportunitity or a drain on your business. His point is quite valid though, unless you can deal with the anger, you cannot move foward with any other subject or rational action.

If the person is not angry with you or your company you may have a huge opportunity. If you can resolve the problem you may have won yourself a loyal customer. However, you need to potentially spend a lot of time getting to the root of the issue. During this time […]

27 May 2008

Delivering Client Value with Agile Development

By Doug Wagner|2017-07-26T16:11:30-06:00May 27th, 2008|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Software Development|Tags: agile, agile development, client value, delivering value, developers, iterations, Software, software development, user story, value|

When all is said and done, moving to agile development methodologies has had positive results for us.

The biggest gain by far is the total focus on delivering client value early and at all stages of a project. Sure, we were focused on client value before, but only at the milestones where there were client deliverables. Usually, iterations were longer and developers did the tasks in any order as long as the client got the expected result at the end of the day. This resulted in being 80% done for a long time yet having software that was not releasable or […]

27 May 2008

Making Dough 3 – Reinventing the Wheel

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:41:22-06:00May 27th, 2008|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

Why is that most people look at the manual (cookbook) only after they get really stuck? This is certainly true for navigating a car. How many people only ask for directions if they are desperate (or their wives make them)?

How many times does something get rebuilt from scratch when the problem has been solved a gazillion times before? Why do some people insist on doing things from scratch for no other reason than they want to do it their way (because it’s “better”)?

I challenge every one of you to learn from the success and failures of others. If you are […]

26 May 2008

Making Dough 2 – Effectiveness

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:41:26-06:00May 26th, 2008|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

There are other lessons in the prior story as well. Making effective use of your precious time applies to not just business owners and managers.

Employees should strive to make a difference every day. You will spend at least one third of your waking adult life at work, you might as well get the most from it. Besides, by focusing on the most important things and not getting distracted by the noise around you, you are actually increasing your value and long term employability.

Another consideration for everyone is to know if a new skill is useful or if it’s wasted. […]

24 May 2008

Making Dough

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:41:28-06:00May 24th, 2008|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

This evening we decided to have tacos for supper. I volunteered to cook dinner.

Started cooking up the lean ground beef, good so far. Got the onions, mushrooms and peppers ready. Looked for soft tortilla shells. None in the fridge or freezer. Looked for hard taco shells, none in cupboard. Now what? We are a 15 minutes drive (each way) from the store.

Well, I decided to make my own taco shells. They did it on survivor so it can’t be that hard. (Peanut gallery said it’s harder than it looks, I didn’t believe her.)

Round one: Found an empty wrapper for […]

21 May 2008

Don’t Worry, Be Golfing

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:41:35-06:00May 21st, 2008|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams|

In my research and contacts with numerous organizations I’ve come across an interesting observation. The people running things and making long-term decisions about how to handle the emerging demographic shift and labour shortages are generally within a few years of retirement themselves.

This only makes sense. After all, the most experienced people in a large organization by definition have been around a while, and they are entitled to retire after many years of service.

If good succession planning is happening, then perhaps it makes sense to turn this issue over to the candidate who is most likely to be filling the […]