Rapid advances in technology. The latest approach to management. If you're trying to improve your business, it's not hard to wonder which way to turn. Let me suggest a guiding theme in choosing your path: Common Sense. Now that's an uncommon approach. It's not that I'm a skeptic - it's just that we've all seen so many technology and management fads that have wasted our energies, cost us time, and - maybe the worst - caused some really good people to go elsewhere.

Back when I was in engineering school, after we got done with the derivations and the calculations, we'd "back up" and take a look at our solution. Did it make sense? It's easy to see that something's wrong when you average 2 and 5 and you get 10 - it's not even within the range of numbers you averaged. As you gained experience and world knowledge, you could look at far more complex problems and get a sense if your solution was possible.

Why don't we do that in the real world of technology and business management? I don't know. Perhaps it's because you can teach methods and techniques, and you can publish and lecture (whether to disseminate improvements or to capitalize on a good thing). But I haven't heard of anyone teaching common sense - certainly not in the world of technology management.

I do believe we individually can learn to rely more on our common sense, and we can cultivate it - even in management of business and technology. That's what this newsletter is about. We write about some topics near and dear to our hearts and our business, but the theme is always common sense in management and technology.
We occasionally have guest articles and opinions that suit the theme, and we welcome your comments.

Topics Near and Dear
So what are the topics near and dear to our hearts?
IT Service If your IT shop isn't thinking about the user community as customers, and if your IT shop isn't actively engaged in making strategic improvements in the company, there's work to be done. Bias: Enabling more revenue, not cost cutting.

Customer Base Development "Customer Relationship Management (CRM)" has gotten corrupted to mean the systems. We'll talk about this more broadly and use our term to include the people, the process, and the technology. In any event, it's about the bottom line.

Knowledge Management Sounds esoteric, but think about the company's collective knowledge and all of its information work product. It's an asset. Are you managing this as well as you manage your money? How much money have you left on the table?

Process Engineering The "process re-engineering" that happened in the 90's was a bust. "Engineering" implies rigor and standardized design rules that can be taught and re-applied, but the 90's smacked of some smart folks showing how to save money in the short term. What happened to making more money in the long term?

Just Plain Management Medical Schools now teach bedside manner. Business Schools now teach ethics. You'd think this was genetically built in to practitioners, but no. So why are some managers better than others, regardless of how good they are at all that's taught in schools?

Whether as free-standing articles or as commentary on other news and articles, we'll touch on these, always with the common sense perspective. Join us.

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Our Services
Is your organization suffering from lack of technological support, or worse, from technology that obstructs more than it enables? If so, we can help.

Stephen E. Lipka, PhD
slipka@AvatarSP.com
(978) 440-8440