People's Resilience > Live Vocal Street Music in Chilli Cold NY and SAP Project Management - a Resilience Effort

Dear Readers,

I was visiting old posts and personal recordings and found this one, which my wife Paula and I have been present at back in December 2008, right in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (I am the left leather brown jacket guy talking to one of the singers).

It was a bloody cold and chili afternoon, and despite of that these gentlemen were there offering their art and hitting high notes and groovy rhythms, never loosing the "mojo" and never loosing the feeling.

Now, two years later, I recall the felling I've had there and reflect about similar situations in different environments.

I can compare this experience as a resiliency effort, singing along together and IN TUNE at a minus zero degree and very windy temperature (or a harsh environment) with some similar situations we can find managing projects and teams in global, regional or local efforts, to implement Infrastructure upgrades or even to implement ERP such as SAP.

In order to manage an SAP Implementation from the Industry perspective, or from the business perspective, we really have to be prepared to connect all the different business scenarios, from people to stakeholders, from resistant key users to resistant executives and day to day business managers, from HR to production people.

During almost one hundred percent of the projects, we will really find different levels of conflicts, key users frustrated, hard work everywhere you look, project people very tired and stakeholders asking for the every breath "faster>better>cheaper" request, as a monolith invisible phase in every project like this.

What have been called to my attention as a strong and recurring motto in Global Projects is the Resilience that heal up from some professionals and even some people inside groups.

Harsh situations and challenging environments puts people under stress, under high pressure for results and deliverables, for project timing and all sort of emotional and professional risks.

These stand point is the "most adequate weather" condition for blowing up the Resilience among the professionals assigned to an specific situation under the path and the whole critical mission of an organizational Maturation.

From the Wikipedia:

"Resilience" in psychology is the positive capacity of people to cope with stress and adversity. This coping may result in the individual “bouncing back” to a previous state of normal functioning, or using the experience of exposure to adversity to produce a “steeling effect” and function better than expected (much like an inoculation gives one the capacity to cope well with future exposure to disease).^[1] Resilience is most commonly understood as a process, and not a trait of an individual."

All in all, all these years of Global Projects and efforts made me observe some brilliant people standing up in the crowd, showing Resilience, earning respect from the comrades, outgoing on the maturity path to career growth, emotional and personal development.

Have a Happy New Year's Eve !!

Sincerely Yours,

Rodrigo Montagner

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_resilience

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resilience

CIO Gestão - Interessante Artigo - Empresas desconhecem benefícios do uso de redes sociais

Prezados Leitores,

Segue interessante matério publicada no site nacional CIO.

Vale aqui a citação.

Empresas desconhecem benefícios do uso de redes sociais

Das 2,1 mil empresas ouvidas em estudo do SAS Institute e da Harvard Business Review, 41% ainda lidam com o desafio de descobrir como tirar proveito da social media.

Pedro Fonseca - Computerworld PT

Publicada em 28 de dezembro de 2010 às 09h00

Obter um diferencial para o negócio ainda é um desafio importante para 41% das organizações pesquisadas em estudo recente do SAS Institute, em parceria com a Harvard Business Review com 2,1 mil executivos de empresas com atuação global. Muito embora, mais da metade já utilizem as redes sociais

Denominado “The New Conversation: Taking Social Media from Talk to Action”, o estudo evidencia que 40% dos responsáveis ainda enfrentam o desafio de medir a eficácia das atividades da organização nas redes sociais. Na mesma linha, quase um terço ainda aponta como importante desafio ligar essas iniciativas a retorno financeiro ou a retorno de investimentos.

Para muitas empresas, as operações nas redes sociais ainda são apenas uma experiência. Só 7% das empresas afirmam já estarem integrando as redes sociais nas suas estratégias globais de marketing, e apenas 23% utilizam ferramentas analíticas para as redes sociais.

Ainda de acordo com o mesmo estudo, 75% das empresas não sabem em que redes sociais seus clientes mais rentáveis andam comentando sobre produtos e serviços próprios ou da concorrência.

“As redes sociais apresentam um grande potencial para as empresas ouvirem os seus clientes, mas ainda são utilizadas quase exclusivamente como um canal unilateral para divulgação das mensagens empresariais”, afirma Luís Moniz, Diretor de Marketing do SAS Portugal. “Esta forma de ver as redes sociais vai mudar à medida que as empresas vão adotando soluções de Business Analytics que permitam medir e avaliar o impacto das suas mensagens através da análise das conversas dos seus clientes atuais e potenciais”, prevê.

Segundo o estudo, muitas organizações parecem estar mais focadas em “fazer barulho” do que em compreender e participar das conversas sobre sua marca, produtos ou serviços. Para metade das empresas pesquisadas que usam as redes sociais o principal benefício é o aumento da notoriedade das organizações e dos seus produtos e serviços. Já 30% veem o aumento do tráfego para os seus sites como um dos principais benefícios, mas apenas 29% reúnem e seguem as opiniões dos clientes online. Enquanto 23% concordam que as redes sociais os ajudam a monitorizar o burburinho favorável, apenas 18% afirmam poder identificar os comentários positivos e negativos.

Investimentos vão aumentar

Em um cenário de dois a três anos, 36% das empresas pesquisadas prevêem investimentos em ferramentas que as possibilitem analisar melhor os “sentimentos” dos clientes e 33% esperam implementar soluções de monitoramento das redes sociais. Ainda neste contexto, 27% das empresas querem fazer análises preditivas e 26% dizem que irão medir o impacto das conversas online. Muitas esperam igualmente integrar o monitoramento das redes sociais com outras ferramentas de marketing para compreender não só o que está sendo dito, como também o perfil de quem fala e qual o seu impacto.

O estudo foi realizado pelo Harvard Business Review Analytic Services através de um questionário online com 2100 assinantes da revista e da e-newsletter Harvard Business Review durante o mês de Julho de 2010. Adicionalmente foram realizadas 12 entrevistas qualitativas por telefone.

Fonte: http://cio.uol.com.br/gestao/2010/12/28/empresas-desconhecem-beneficios-do-uso-de-redes-sociais/

Um abraço

Rodrigo

Merry Christmas/ Feliz Natal / Feliz Navidad

Caros leitores e amigos,






Mais um ano se passou, muitos projetos, viagens, trabalhos, desafios, filha nascendo, novos desafios e um novo, talentoso e motivado time para gerenciar, com novos projetos, uma nova posição, novas projeções.


Desejo  a todos vocês a mesma felicidade, presença de Deus e realizações que Ele proporcionou a mim e a minha família durante este ano.


Um Feliz Natal a todos, lembrando que nossa FAMÍLIA é SEMPRE o mais importante !


                            *******



Another year has passed, many projects, travel, jobs, projects, challenges, daughter born, new challenges and a new, talented and motivated team to manage, with new projects, a new position, new projections.


I wish you all the same happiness, God's presence and accomplishments that he gave me and my family this year.


Merry Christmas to all, remembering that our FAMILY IS ALWAYS the most important!







                                                         *********************





Otro año ha pasado, muchos proyectos, viajes, trabajos, retos, hija nació, nuevos retos y un nuevo, talentoso y motivado equipo de gestionar, con nuevos proyectos, una nueva posición, las nuevas previsiones.


Le deseo toda la felicidad misma, la presencia de Dios y los logros que ha dado a mí ya mi familia este año.


Feliz Navidad a todos, recordando que nuestra FAMILIA es siempre lo más importante!

Miles Davis’ Music Lesson for Performance Management

This is a great article written by Gary Cokins in his blog "Closing the Intelligence Gap".
His Blog is listed in my favorite's list.


A very smart approach using Jazz Music as a bridge.

Miles Davis’ Music Lesson for Performance Management

Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington were jazz greats. And then came MilesDavis. What can we learn from the jazz legend musician, Miles Davis, about enterprise performance management?

Let’s start with Davis’ second quintet from 1964-1968 which consisted of Davis on trumpet, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on double bass, Tony Williams on drums, and Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone. Each of these talented musicians continued on with notable individual music careers. But what was exceptional when they played together was an observation Davis made when he said, “We weren’t playing chords anymore.” Initially the quintet played structured music following the notes. But then they evolved and connected as a team and played improvised music spontaneously. They could think like one without being inhibited. They knew they were free to go anywhere with their sound, and the others would follow.

How often have you enjoyed a shared experience like that? What the five of them were able to do is to play solo but complement each other to create the sound of a quintet. My vision is that is how an integrated enterprise performance management team of project leaders should play together. Imagine each project leader taking charge of these foundational methodologies:

Strategy mapping, performance measures (with a balanced scorecard and cascaded dashboards), and the resulting projects and initiatives portfolio. These link operations to the executive team’s strategy and align employee behavior and priorities with the strategy.

Demand Forecasting. Forecasting is arguably the independent variable from which all other plans and actions are dependent variables. The purpose is to reduce uncertainty. And as a side bonus, the outcome facilitates shifting to performance-based budgeting and driver-based rolling financial forecasts.

Customer intelligence, economic value, and profitability analysis. These answer the questions of which type of customer is attractive to retain, to grow, to win back, and to acquire? And which types are not? And, one step further, how much should be spent on each customer micro-segment to gain optimal profit lift? Activity based costing is an important element.

Risk management. To properly balance the organization’s risk appetite with its risk exposure and to optimally fund risk mitigation projects.

Business analytics. To ask questions and solve problems that lead to better decisions with exploratory and confirmatory analysis.


Each of these pursuits can stand on their own as a component to manage and improve an organization’s performance. But as with Miles Davis’ “Second Great Quintet,” the integration of them, with business anaytics embedded, produces a sound that is much larger than the sum of the parts. When they are synchronized, you “aren’t playing chords anymore.” Volatility is the new normal, so the ability to continuously improvise and synchronize in an agile way can fulfill the complete vision for enterprise performance management. 

Source: http://blogs.sas.com/cokins/index.php?/archives/168-Miles-Davis-Music-Lesson-for-Performance-Management.html

E.E Cummings

Here is one of my favorite poems of all times, written by a great spirit and a great voice of the century.

Somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and

my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands 

Edward Estlin Cummings 

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Cummings

http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/c#a2755

I  dedicate this post to my beloved wife Paula, I Love You !!!