This is a posting in The Fish Pond Metaphor series by Ali Anani and Bas de Baar.

The image we like to have of our understanding of globalization is the one popularized by Thomas Friedman, that of a flattened world, in which economic development or potential are equally spread all over the world. Although we would love to believe this, the reality is different. "Globalization has changed the economic playing field, but hasn't leveled it", argues Richard Florida is his article "The World Is Spiky".

Photography by Jaros?aw Pocztarski.

Using several different ways of looking at the globe results always in the same pattern: economic development is clustered, large urban areas create a so-called spike.
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Yesterday I wrote a piece at SVProjectManagement.com about an important lesson we can learn from the Fish Pond Metaphor: the need to preplan.

"The idea about preplanning is to equip yourself in such a way that you can adapt to circumstances. That you create an start situation that is as good as you possibly can. If you go to the arctic, you take warm cloths, if you go to the tropics you pack T-shirts. If you don’t know, you pack several shirts you can wear over each other, depending on the temperature."

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This is a posting in The Fish Pond Metaphor series by Ali Anani and Bas de Baar

As projects start and end within organizations the demand for employees fluctuates. It seems that in certain times the workforce is just too small to handle all tasks, and in slow times many employees are doing nothing. With change and with projects come the tidal movement of need of labor force. Most projects will be done in times of change, when economic forces are up or down. Times of stability don't call for much projects.

Hibernation: After Busy Times, Leave Them Alone

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by Ali Anani and Bas de Baar

In this posting we will introduce a view on organizational structures using The Fish Pond. It provides an alternative perspective in answering the question whether we should have flat organizations, pyramidal organizations or something in between. We will use the process of pond stratification as illustration.

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I tried to get around it. I tried to avoid it. But in this case I can run, but I am surely unable to hide. So I decided to face it head on, get it out in the open. I just have to make the connection between training your mind for adaption, as suggested in earlier posts, and meditation. There, I said it. Now I probably get haunted by metric fetishist and named Project Swami. I will be strong.

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The world is changing dramatically, fast and beyond everything we have seen. Globalization and technology have introduced more diversity, more dynamics and more interdependencies than ever before. This provides project management, and management in general, with a challenge. How to survive in this environment? Together with dr Ali Anani, I am taking on this challenge with an attempt to provide some structure and some answers for management practitioners.

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