Archive for March 2008

My last role at Intel was leading a leadership development effort for a large group in the IT organization. I learned a lot about leadership, its development, and what it takes for such a development effort to succeed in an organization (not easy). As I surfed our blog site, I looked for leadership articles and [...]

We’ve all been there. “Here’s a project. It needs to be done in three months!” You get that sinking feeling that you are already late and you don’t even know what it is that the project is trying to achieve.
How do you handle these situations?
In my experience, the worse thing you can do as a [...]

Last year I wrote about Map Days (search for Solera and you’ll find my entries). You may recall that Map Days are the face-to-face sessions used to develop plans under NSPM (No Surprises Project Management by Timm Esque). During these sessions, all team members get together to develop a plan that builds on the group’s [...]

What is it about software development projects that is different from many other types of projects? There are many things, but Scott Adams nailed on the head one of them with his March 16th Dilbert cartoon which gave me the idea for this column’s title. In the strip, Pointy Haired Boss says “My management philosophy [...]

As I was mulling the blogs to write this week, along came my regular email from Projects @ Work including a link to David Schmaltz “Unlearning Project Management” published on March 17, 2008 (you may need to register to get access). The article is a recap of a PMI-published study by Lauri Koskela and Greg [...]

Early in my PM career, back in the 1980s, I was assigned the technical leadership of a software migration effort. I dutifully identified tasks, resources, and loaded those into the MS-DOS version of Microsoft Project (remember the days?) I then proceeded to assign the tasks and track their progress. Before that, though, I noticed that [...]

How many times have you read a book, or gone to a workshop and said “yes, this is useful, I’m going to do this” and then found that, well, nothing happened?
How to explain this? Too busy? Not motivated enough? Sure, those things may play a role, but I think there’s something deeper going on [...]

One of the most fundamental things that anyone can do for their leadership skills is basic: figure out how to feel great, day after day.
This is the stuff of peak performance athletes, and with books like The Corporate Athlete and The Power of Full Engagement these ideas are being used in companies, too.
It seems basic [...]

Today it is critical that we talk about impact. I’ve introduced a number of ideas this week, and there are more coming this weekend. But let’s face it: reading about ideas never changed anything. The impact comes from taking an idea, testing it out, and seeing if there is a way to get value from [...]

We weren’t built for this. “This” being a life in which we are constantly in a stress response. That is my key take away from a fascinating book by MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Robert Sapolsky.
In Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers Sapolsky writes that we aren’t built to withstand constant, high levels of stress. And that our [...]

Life has a funny way of working. Today I knew that I would be writing about a paradoxical way of leading under pressure. And sure enough, an opportunity arose this afternoon for me to apply this technique.
Here’s what happened. I am in a monthly professional development program with a class of 30 people. We are [...]

Ideally, before you find yourself in the hot seat, you’ll have had some time to prepare and condition. But what if you find yourself in a pressure situation, and aren’t prepared for it? Here are several things I’ve found that help.

Technorati Tags: Leadership, psychology

What do you do to support yourself, to help you work well, be an effective leader, under pressure?
Being a leader can be stressful. Very stressful. There’s a lot going on, a lot of responsibility. Competitive threats. Murphy’s Law. Personal conflicts. This isn’t going to change, so the question is “what can I, as a leader, [...]

I had a stimulating discussion today with Travis, a friend and colleague about communication styles. It reminded me about the importance of catching people doing things right. Many managers and co-workers miss opportunities to congratulate or thank people who go above and beyond, but rarely miss an opportunity to criticize when mistakes are made.
Here are [...]

Finding the right balance of documentation and methodology can be challenging on small projects. Here are some guidelines I use when managing smaller projects.
I have been managing small projects for some time now. Some of my project are really tiny, I’m talking about 8 hours of work max. Others can be 2 week or [...]

I recently studied Frederick Hertzberg’s article on his motivational theory, in the Harvard Business Review. The title is “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” Read it here.
I’ve heard about the theory before of course, vaguely referred to as the hygiene/motivator theory and it usually managed to earn about 1 slide in a presentation [...]

I wrote earlier about a potential method of using Critical Chain-stype “mini-buffers” within an element of a traditional project management approach. Now I would like to revisit multi-tasking and how having some experience with the Agile software development methodology called SCRUM has helped me formulate some guidelines. Some of these ideas come straight from Critical [...]

Today I was trying to think of ways to integrate some of the methods and benefits of Critical Chain project management into the traditional PM methodology most companies use. I wanted to pick out one element of CC that would potentially yield the most benefit without much, if any, additional overhead to the project manager. [...]

One thing that never changes is the constancy of change. That seems like a self-evident truth, doesn’t it? So why do we plan as if change will not happen?People in general are fairly good at managing change, but of course we vary widely in those abilities among individuals. As a result, I believe most of [...]

I recently read a new book by Curt Finch, CEO of Journyx, Inc. titled “All Your Money Won’t Another Minute Buy – Valuing Time as a Business Resource.” I have always been a student of time management, so I was delighted with the opportunity to interview Curt about the book. Please enjoy the interview below.

Making due with too little food and a few scraps of sleep might be appropriate for an outdoor survival course or a military boot camp, but it’s no way to treat yourself when you’re a project manager. Sure, you’re busy with wall-to-wall meetings, ubiquitous email and a non-stop line of people barking at your [...]