I want to congratulate my friend Ric Merrifield on the publication of his article, "The Next Revolution in Productivity" in Harvard Business Review this month.

This management approach which looks at capabilities rather than process flows has been around a few years at Microsoft. They used to call it "Motion." The article doesn't mention that name so I don't know whether they are still using it.

Ric tells me that there is a book just around the corner and that he's really beginning to build momentum around the approach.

One of his co-authors Jack Calhoun has been a big fan of my book for several years. He used to pass out copies at Microsoft before he learned I was working there. One day, I was invited to a meeting with a few folks and Ric and Jack were both present. Jack didn't put it together until I introduced myself, then I got one of those moments for me, "Ah, you are that David Anderson," he proclaimed. I get that a lot ;-) The curse of a common name.

The Motion heat map approach is a very focused approach to improvement. At Modus Cooperandi, we specialize in focused approaches to change and performance improvement. This makes me think I need to go talk to Ric and figure out whether we should be offering Motion as part of our services. At the very least, we could do with analyzing how the Heat Map approach fits with our Lean, TOC, reduction of variability in the value stream approach. I also wonder if there is a mapping between Motion and CMMI and whether the two could play together nicely? I think I'll give that one to Oksana to research ;-) Technorati tag:Ric+Merrifield, Jack+Calhoun, Microsoft, Harvard+Business+Review, HBR, Management