The Hammer

I was updating a colleague about some things that we are doing and exploring last week.  One of the things he commented on was the issue of "The Hammer".

In dealing with today’s innovation and finding out a home for it, we somethimes get caught thinking that because we have a hammer everything looks like a nail.  I think this is natural and that is where proper evaluation and context capture is important before going to far with anything – be smart about it.  Some examples as things that we have been talking about on the blog:

  • Innovation vs The Way we do it Now – quite often how we do things now is actually fine
  • Agile vs Waterfall – they both have a home in an organization
  • SOA, Data SOA, ________ add your particular flavour here.
  1. Jim Reply

    The challenge of innovation is to be able to rethink a problem which you have already solved. I recall after coming up with a solution to a problem how difficult it was to just go back and find another approach. I think people who can do that have a great talent. In the consulting business I always noticed I tried to approach the new consulting assignment the way I did my last assignment. It took a lot of effort to leave that behind and find a new way. I had to convince myself that the old approach was just not suitable. I think people who have a canned process for a certain type of project, do their clients dis-service by trying to fit their situation into a canned process. I think it is poor consulting, mental laziness and selling the client short. Now when you working as a team you do need an agreed upon approach. But we must be flexible within some structure.

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