New Blogger to this Website

Hello Everyone - I am scheduled to blog next week and thought I’d start by asking a few questions.  Shall I write about:

• Building Trust in Distant Teams
• Some “diplomacy tips” managing people from other parts of the world?
• Communication in Meetings - with people with diverse backgrounds?
• Managing mixed ages, genders, styles, cultures, etc.?
• Increasing quality, consistency, and timeliness in teams working in other parts of the world?
• Communication and learning styles?

Drum this Into Your PM Head!

Having been told my whole life that sometimes I can be a bit too intense, it was enormously liberating to finally find an environment where I blended right in – a drum circle of more than 50 passionate lunatics banging away like they were being paid by the decibel. These were not people in search of cutting edge project management best practices. They were seekers of enlightenment in a workshop at Esalen, an idyllic setting on the California coast just south of a town called Big Sur (quite the misnomer because there is nothing “big” about this town – it’s somewhere between the “Slow” and “Resume Speed” signs on Highway 1). (more…)

Invest Now or Pay Later?

The payment is project failure.  The investment is effective project sponsorship.  Successful project managers invest in managing their sponsors—they avoid becoming victim to bad situations by proactively eliciting the support they need.

Examples abound about how project managers manage upwards.  (more…)

The Accidental Sponsor?

Many executives are assigned as project sponsors, but their organizations do not spend time training and explaining their expected roles and responsibilities during project life cycles.   The accidental project manager role is well known, and the same applies to sponsors.

The sponsor role can have a tremendous impact on project success.  However, reality is quite different.  The sponsor role appears confused in many organizations.  Sometimes the sponsor is not very involved in the project.  On the other hand, sometimes the project sponsor is too involved and acts or tries to act as a super project manager, generating more conflict and problems. (more…)

Vital Ingredients

I often present the ten pieces of a puzzle that comprise an environment for successful projects.  The pieces, however, will not stay together without glue. The glue has two vital ingredients:  authenticity and integrity.  Authenticity means that managers really mean what they say.  Integrity means that they really do what they say they will do, and for the reasons they stated to begin with.  It is a recurring theme in every environment where people interact that authenticity and integrity link the head and the heart, the words and the action; they separate belief from disbelief, and often make the difference between success and failure. (more…)

Rewriting Sisyphus

Part One of Creating the Project Office is creating the conditions for change; Part Two is making the change; Part Three is making change stick.  Our greatest challenge in putting the concepts into action is to rewrite the myth of Sisyphus.  Greek gods condemned Sisyphus to keep rolling a rock to the top of a mountain where it would fall back of its own weight.  Sisyphus abandons any illusion that he might succeed at the assigned task; he begins to view his ability to do the task again and again as a form of victory, much like trying to do too many projects with no hope of complete success.

Modern organizations cannot afford futile and hopeless efforts.  (more…)

Creating the Project Office - Part Three - making change stick

Part One is creating the conditions for change; Part Two is making the change. We are now ready to enter the final phase of the journey, the toughest part—making change stick.  If the change agent team has made it this far, some amount of time has elapsed.  The project office has no doubt changed many times, perhaps moving from a project control office, then to a project management center of excellence, and perhaps onto a strategic project office. (more…)