Change

By Ronald Brown • May 9th, 2012

I’m sure you know that in 2005, Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave a very memorable commencement address at Stanford University. He told three stories about his life. The first was a lesson about “connecting the dots.” He said that you can connect dots looking backwards, but you can’t connect them looking forwards. For that, he [...]

Enhancing PMP with Business Process Excellence Part III (Final Part of Series) Viable Lean Six Sigma Solutions to Validate Project Timelines and Increase KPI Linkage for PMP leaders Dr. Shree Nanguneri and Mr. Gustav Toppenberg   Meandering in a World Swayed by Certification: In Part I, we addressed the vitality of the linkage of a [...]

On a closely related topic to my last post, I would like to relate a recent experience I had with a consumer product that illustrates one very important aspect of consumer products that is often not given enough importance in the product development priority list: User Interface Speed. We have been satisfied owners of a [...]

In my last blog, we looked at the research-based link between happiness and the ability to focus the mind. Simply put, people who are able to focus their minds a greater percentage of the time (most people’s minds wander about 50%) appear to be happier and more productive at home and at work. Now, I’d [...]

Beliefs, and by extension, belief systems, are powerful energy magnets that shape our inner and outer worlds … and they can be innocently (or not so innocently) misleading. For example, in the 1500′s, authority figures believed that the world was flat as a pancake; in the 1940’s doctors appeared in ads advocating the health benefits [...]

Every day we come face to face with situations and events that can elicit responses of fear, anxiety, and worry. For the most part, we’re more than capable of handling those events, especially when they remind us of past circumstances that we’ve encountered and either overcome or learned from our mistakes (I’ve got many of [...]

In the last 5 years or so, we have realized that comparing these two roles is like comparing Apples and Oranges. Not many companies now overlap these roles. These roles over the time have evolved from being janitors of products and projects to management of them. Product management has learned a lot from project management. Let us examine what project management can learn from product management?

Entrepreneurial Success       Enterprise and Startup Institutions: In parts I and II, we devoted our thoughts to the industrial and academic environment on the value and benefits of LSS and PM skills for this decade. In part III of this series, our field of focus will be confined to startups, small and medium [...]

If all you are planning on doing at the next conference you attend is to learn something from the sessions and the exhibits, my advice would be to save your money, focus on your work, and ‘get the dvd’. As we all know, attending conferences isn’t just about the sessions, the keynote speakers, or the product demos. The values you attain from attending conferences are all in the periphery, they are about the ‘X Factors’, those that help you , your team and your company get ahead professionally.

Did you know Project Management is having a birthday? Well, sort of a birthday. It was 100  years ago, in 1911, that Frederick W. Taylor published Principles of Scientific Management. Early pioneers of project management, such as Henry Gantt, were followers of Dr. Taylor. Now, for historical accuracy, it should be noted that Dartmouth College [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about communication and perception. A friend of mine has gone from team member to project leader. I’ve known this person for a decade now and it’s been a fascinating process to see how he views the team now that he’s in charge, and vice versa, how the team views [...]

Early Impressions of Google+: Be Scared Facebook, Very Scared Last year, I wrote a blog post about the Next, Big Social Network.  I shared my thoughts on why I thought Facebook would soon be declining in popularity and what I thought the Social Network of the Future would have.  Well, I think it’s finally here, [...]

Nope. There’s just no way around it.  You are going to have to work with people. Even if you are a “technical project manager” buried in the bowels of a data center or focused on software projects or on enterprise application integration projects, the key to your success is how you work with people. Your [...]

When you first start out as a professional project manager, you typically have had some informal project management experience as part of your other professional responsibilities. Then you take a serious PM course or two, maybe get a PMP and suddenly you find yourself equipped with a giant tool chest full of powerful and complex [...]

One of my favorite topics in professional life concerns the things we do to develop ourselves. The most interesting part of this topic is realizing that it is not complex. The ideas you need to master are well known and quite simple. The only question is whether or not you will become committed to building [...]

This is the final post in my series exploring post-quake Japan. While I’ve enjoyed many aspects of working with Japanese companies in recent years, one issue that’s been a frequent cause of consternation is what I perceive to be their relatively slow pace of change. OK, to be perfectly honest I’m not impressed with the [...]