Leading Teams – Not for Bossy People

Leading a team presents greater challenges than working alone, but if you want to accomplish tasks that are impossible for one person you’ve got to have a team. One person can’t play a baseball game by themselves, play all of the instruments in a live symphony performance, or run a global company. What’s the difference between a team and a group? A team is a group of people with a common goal. Now maybe it’s a dysfunctional team, or just ineffective, but if you’re working in a group towards a common goal you are part of a team. So that should make it pretty clear what you, as a leader of a team, need to do – assure that your team has a shared goal and that the people on your team know what it is. As obvious as this seems, it has been proven repeatedly to be the #1 reason that teams do not achieve their goals. For me, the acid test for whether goals are clear and shared by all team members is to call each of them up at 3 AM and demand to know what the team goal is. If they each answer similarly in their groggy state, you’ve done your job. (more…)

Leading One-on-One

If you are going to lead hordes of peeps someday you’d better start by being able to lead a single individual. Pretty much the only way we have of directly leading another person is through communication, and I sure as heck don’t mean email! (Talking face-to-face is fraught with plenty of misunderstandings, and I’ve often wished for a rewind and erase button on my mouth, but email is even more perilous.) In spite of the fact that many conversations resemble two TVs facing one another, communication is more than just talking. Communication also involves . . . brace yourself, I’m going to use the “L” word here . . . (more…)

Leading From the Inside Out

There was a story about a business school that had the question “Are you a leader?” on their application. Seems like a trick question, right? So everyone except one person answered “Yes” that year. The guy who answered “:No” agonized over submitting that answer because he figured that his application might be rejected as a result. He was surprised to learn that he was accepted. The letter read “We received over 5000 applications this year and you were the only person to answer ‘No’ to the question ‘Are you a leader?’ We are admitting over 1000 of those applicants, including you. We figured with all of those leaders we’ll need at least one follower.

You may be one of those lucky people called a born leader, or just some accidental leader who stubs their toe on their leadership capability and happens to have a bunch of people start following them. If so, good for you! Otherwise you may want to take a more intentional route to becoming the kind of leader you admire. (more…)

Manage Cows, but LEAD People

Lately I have trouble saying “project management” because, when I do, I always have the urge to blurt out “You can manage cows, but you must LEAD people!” So I’m going to dedicate this week’s blogs to exploring leadership with no apologies to leaving out “management”, and even “project”, every now and then.

Most of the experiences that have increased my cynicism over the years are due to failures of leadership, both my own and others. I spent the first 10 years of my career naively expecting people in official leadership positions to step up, do the right thing and lead courageously, even at great possible cost to their own livelihood and career. (OK, I said I was naïve.) From the perspective of my minuscule position of relative powerlessness, my organizations were steaming heaps of dysfunctional behavior and inefficiency, and what our official leaders needed to do seemed blindingly obvious. (more…)

What Are The 7 Easy Steps In Creating a Great Project Vision Statement - Part 2

So, how do you actually go about creating this great 1-2 page Project Vision Statement which minimizes the many project scope changes that you may currently be facing? Wouldn’t you like to avoid that scope creep once and for all? It’s really quite straightforward…… (more…)

Can You Really Create a Great 1-2 Page Project Vision Statement? - Part 1

PART 1: A Sample Project Vision Statement - This Blog

Many of you see the value in creating a short project ‘Vision’ statement, to capture the assessments and trade-offs made during the planning process and maximize the project’s chances of success. This could also be a way to achieve alignment, commitment, and accountability… (more…)

It’s Easy to Add Complexity and Immaturity to a Probability-Impact Risk Table

You may be a user of risk Probability-Impact Tables; after all they are one of the most popular risk management tools. But how do you bring the important risk factors of Complexity and Immaturity into your project risk management? You can do it the hard way, or… (more…)