David Jacobson's External Insights

Project management

I've been working on long-term projects which have stopped me starting some new projects.

Should I start the new ones anyway? No. I agree with Johanna Rothman here: put your priority into finishing projects if you can before you start new ones.

Her list method makes sense and helps sort out what you need to do next to take that almost-finished project to the next step before you start something else.

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior has been getting good reviews.

An age-old question that small business owners face all the time is, “Why do intelligent people make stupid choices?” Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior examines the reasons for such behavior and provides the ways people can avoid dumb decisions. Here is an interview by Guy Kawasaki with one of the book’s authors, Ori Brafman.

How Can Decision Making Be Improved?

HBS has published a Working Paper by Chugh, Milkman, and Bazerman on How Can Decision Making Be Improved?

They pose the problem as follows:

If we all behaved optimally, costs and benefits would always be accurately weighed, impatience would not exist, gains would never be foregone in order to spite others, no relevant information would ever be overlooked, and moral behavior would always be aligned with moral attitudes. Unfortunately, we have little understanding of how to help people overcome their many biases and behave optimally.

The article discusses System 1 and System 2 thinking and how we can move from one to the other.

System 1 refers to our intuitive system, which is typically fast, automatic, effortless, implicit, and emotional. System 2 refers to reasoning that is slower, conscious, effortful, explicit, and logical.

New online business ideas

Any new business has to satisfy a need (or convince customers there is a need to be filled). It can answer that question: Why doesn't somebody do something about that?

Paul Graham has written about Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund.

And here are 10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich.

Effective execution of strategies

The Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution from Harvard Business Review points out that implementation depends largely on 2 factors:

• Clarifying decision rights— for instance, specifying who “owns” each decision and who must provide input
• Ensuring information flows where it’s needed— such as promoting managers laterally so they build networks needed for the cross-unit collaboration critical to a new strategy

Booz has also published an interesting Organization Effectiveness Simulator.

Entrepreneur blogs

The Wall Street Journal lists 15 Entrepreneur Blogs Worth Reading.

I'dd add the following:

Guerilla Marketing for Consultants

A VC

HBS Working Knowledge

Paul McKey

Is your business still in 1999?

Australia 2020

The Australia 2020 summit has issued its initial report.

Although there is doubt about whether the delegates were representative and whether they were the "best and brightest" the report contains a snapshot of contemporary Australian views which the Government will consider.

UPDATE: David Marr comments on the process.

UPDATE: Final Report

Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific

The Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific is produced by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), to provide a detailed picture of the major economic, social and environmental trends in Asia and the Pacific. Findings in this year’s edition include increased urban poverty, that energy consumption grew at a pace unequalled elsewhere and increased motorization is improving mobility.

Building a company culture

This interview with Google's engineering director gives some insight into how the company maintains its creative culture and innovative operations.