• Memorize a presentation? Forget about it!

    Memorize a presentation? Presenting is a highly rewarding exercise. Yet many people struggle with it. Nervousness and also the required preparation induce uncomfortable feelings in many people. The first one is a necessary evil and it can be dealt with. But how about the second one? People often ask me how I manage to memorize…

  • 6 Performance Management lessons from the Tour de France

    The Tour de France The toughest sporting event of the year is in full swing right now. No, I am not talking about the Olympics. I am talking about the Tour de France. No other sport requires its athletes to perform at the highest level for 21 consecutive days. Think about this: Riders burn an…

  • Is it worth going the extra mile?

    That last bit of effort Most of us have encountered many situations where we need to make a decision: do we want to put in just a little bit more effort or should we just let it go. There is the project proposal that we have been working on for days. Should we do another…

  • 8 reasons why you should love presenting

    Do YOU love presenting? Too many people hate presenting. A few weeks ago, I wrote about some strategies to combat nervousness when presenting to a larger group of people. This post turned out to be extremely popular. However, I just realized that I had omitted an important point: Why would I want to present in…

  • Lessons from the discovery-driven planning approach

    Discovery-driven planning A few weeks ago I researched ideas for improving current planning and forecasting approaches. I stumbled upon a methodology that I had long forgotten. It is called ‘Discovery-driven planning’ and it was developed by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan. The idea was first published in the July 1995 issue of the Harvard Business…

  • Updates, updates, updates

    Busy times Wow. It’s been a busy but exciting week. There is a lot going on in the business analytics space these days. Here are some updates that you might find interesting. There is a new version of the IBM Cognos iPad app. You can download it from the iTunes store. The new version has…

  • TM1 – The swiss army knife for the finance department?

    IBM Cognos TM1 No doubt, IBM Cognos TM1 is a unique solution. I have never met so many loyal and enthusiastic long-term customers than for any other finance-related software solution. TM1 is special indeed. There is a lot to like: it is lightening fast (64-bit in memory), configuration does not require rocket-science, it supports Excel,…

  • The robot – a case study about the value of process automation

    The case for process automation Many business analytics programs follow a classic approach – they start with process automation. It is the low hanging fruit. Executives and project managers like process automation as it is usually easy to measure and identify the benefits (e.g.: cycle time reduced by 2 days, aggregation is 60% faster). However,…

  • Business Analytics Updates for June 14th

    Greetings. It’s been an incredibly busy few weeks for me with lot’s of travel through Asia. The IBM Finance Forum events for that region were kicked off last Wednesday. I was pleasantly surprised by the huge number of finance professionals that joined the events in Taipei, Hong Kong and Shanghai. As I am still recovering…

  • David Parmenter’s reading list – Listen to the King of KPIs

    David Parmenter Greetings from Shanghai. For the past seven days, I have had the pleasure of working with the thought-leader, book author and consultant David Parmenter. He is also known as the King of KPIs based on his best-selling book Key Performance Indicators (KPI): Developing, Implementing, and Using Winning KPIs. David and I have been…

Got any book recommendations?