Tigerfish fave finds - June 2007

(1) Prada Store
That's what I call product design in the user experience. Human-centered design is about bringing behavior and personality into the product. No longer it is about design specifications. Have you ever walked into a Prada store and have several fittings in one of their high-tech dressing rooms ? WOW! I don't think I will ever get a chance to step into a Prada store in my lifetime but I was truly amazed by how technologies such as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) can revolutionize and "culturized" a retail business. AWESOME. Watch the video.

Haha! And there is Dilbert. I will never forget Dilbert. Whatever industry or job I will undertake in future, I hope to be in Cubeville. WOW!



(2) Quote: "Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education." -Mark Twain

(3) Food: Tracing the footsteps of your food - look at how brands attach ‘life story labels' to their products, on whatever does the least harm - how fresh is your egg and where does your egg come from. Limited to UK eggs, meantime. Don't forget the eglu too! You can now "cut off" all the middlemEn in the supply-chain.



I'm also found here. Do drop by for a visit. :)

Is your organization healthy ?

There is one sentence or quotation that left an impression on me after reading Business Week's list of 25 most innovative companies

The companies...really thinking about this smartly are putting in place structures...that will make this not a yearlong fad but a decade-long effort

This is really also the gist of another article from Mckinsey - Anatomy of a Healthy Organization. As a simple yet appropriate metaphor

Human health which improves when cared for, and deteriorates when neglected

It is easy to fall into traps, exposed or hidden. More easily into exposed traps of course. I mean, who will see a deep trench in front of them and still put one foot or have two feet inside? But in organizations, it is common and sometimes unavoidable to fall into traps. Short-term deadlines, a new product launch coming up next week, sales figures that closes in a months time which will mark your performance for the entire quarter. As mindful or cognitive or even self-knowledge, these traps are there, always there. You can't avoid them, just have to manage them.

And often, you can't manage them alone. If you are the employee, you need a GOOD manager who is not "the blind leading the blind". If you are the manager, GOOD LUCK!

Organizations are getting mashed up differently these days. Globalization, cross-culture differences. When people make up your organizations, there are bound to be differences, non-homogeneity and conflict. Organizations 3.0

And putting project management into organization "health" development can be as effective as managing your IT project. The ideation and long range vision; organization culture/environment, alignment of goals and metrics will altogether, directly or indirectly, translates to the strategies - THE general health being, which require investment (resources~time, money, people) to evolve into actionable tasks of projects, programs and portfolio - in other words, execution.

In other words, at operational level and striving for operational excellence and performance, they must be an ability to withstand shocks and discontinuities
1. resilience ~ be contend with unpredictable and threatening disruptions
2. execution ~ make good decision and perform

Alignment against a common goal
3. alignment ~ of cohesive purpose, shared identity (eg. goals to metrics, strategies to execution)

Growth
4. renewal ~ establishing new markets, and leveraging the existing
5. complementarity ~ hiring, training, human resources

How many companies put a "heath" account to their organizations; vs companies that traditionally sticks solely to revenue generating numbers, profits etc.

Is your organization healthy ?