Kaizen

By Nathalie Udo • January 28th, 2010

I truly believe in continuous improvement. In today’s world standing still really translates into regression. I apply that continuous improvement to different areas of my life: I keep pursuing knowledge on scuba diving in general and its physiology in specific, I am planning to improve my technical skills of motorcycling this year, I learn new [...]

This is the very last week of 2009. Can you believe it? This year has gone by faster than any others. It was a year of extremes: extreme lows and extreme highs. Too many people lost their jobs, their houses, their loved ones or their spirit this year.  Every great project manager knows the value [...]

Don’t act like you know it all

When you’re new to a role, it’s natural to cover up your own ignorance. You want to earn respect, [...]

….I appreciated the education much more than before. When I was 18, I took out loans and didn’t really feel like I was paying for it. I skipped classes sometimes, etc. This time around…I applied myself to the material as much as I could.

You got the call.

They want you to come in for an interview. After the elation wears off, you start sweating.

What are they going to ask? How can I best prepare for this? What if I prepare for the wrong things?

What can you do when you feel like you’ve hit a bump on your project manager career path? Here are my thoughts, and I invite you to add your own comments with advice for this professional.

A business student recently interviewed me via email. She is interested in project management and this was part of an assignment to reach out to people via Twitter to interview about what they do and the state of their industry/role. (My kudos to the professor for encouraging students to use new media to interact with people who are already in the field!)

I asked her permission to share the interview with you, I hope you find it helpful. Leave comments on what you agree and do not agree with!

I received a great question from a subscriber to my PMP Guide newsletter about methodologies and frameworks.

He cited a bountiful list with a question of whether he needs to know all of these in and out:

My esteemed colleague Natalie Udo’s post a few weeks ago, “What is a Project Manager?” started me thinking about what are the elements which make us successful in the business. And hopefully, I’m reinforcing Kimberly Wiefling’s recent posts on what are the keys to success as a project leader… and not being too redundant – Thanks, [...]

As I was wracking my brain trying to think of interesting topics to write about for this week’s blogs, it came to me, a subject which is a sore spot and a pet peeve of mine – the fact that people don’t say “thank you” very often on projects, or in everyday business situations much (except [...]

Trying to get your foot in the door in project management?
Projectize your resume.
A project manager resume is similar to other resumes, except for one key difference I can recommend. This is one key thing I changed when I began trying to get specifically into the project management field, and did not have enough formal [...]

Is anyone up in arms yet?
Good.
From a Reader
Anne from the US is a recent subscriber to the Project Management Career Newsletter.
She hit reply to one of my messages to pose a question and get my take.  Thank you Anne, for permitting me to share some of our exchange to benefit others!
The following is [...]

I love it when people contact me to ask a question. It helps me to know that real people are out there somewhere behind the screen of my laptop.
I can’t believe you all fit in there. Technology is amazing.
How do you break into project management when you have been running your own business [...]

I am passionate about project management in general, and helping people new to the field more specifically.
But let’s be honest. We’re all nuts.
Not Everyone is Crazy Enough to be a Project Manager
There is a specific form of gluttony for punishment that comes with the territory (some consider it a clinical condition). The decision [...]

In my first post about Project Management and Knowledge Management I spoke about Collaboration, in this second post I will talk about after-action reviews.
After-action review also known as a project snap-shot, lessons learned, or any number of other names is an important Knowledge Management activity to complete at the end of a project. They don’t [...]

I’d like to start things off in this posting with a joke I heard on the US Television show, Two and a Half Men. Now keep in mind that the show is full of gratuitous innuendo and juvenile comedy, much of it not easily translatable in (nor suitable for) the context of project management.  In [...]

Taking advantage of the social networks that we PMs have started to form on LinkedIn, I did some polling in early 2009 to gauge the interest level (see post below) in the brand-spanking-new PMBOK(R) Guide.
Using a completely non-scientific scale that I made up in 17.4 seconds, and asking the question on the larger LinkedIn Groups [...]

Courage is positioned as a pivotal issue for project management panache by Mike Levy. Courage is facing difficulties without fear. So what’s to fear in project-land? Plenty!
Let’s name a few fear factors:
•    Potential loss of job
•    Actual loss of team members
•    Churn in project portfolio’s
•    Confusion in corporate goals
•    Lack of time for skill development
•    [...]

Craig Brown in his Monday comment professes that project management panache requires presenting information with no fear. When the news is bad; it takes pluck and power and prowess.
What is pluck? It is passion, grits and guts for a subject. For me; project performance improvement is my passion. I, like Craig, talked about the Chaos [...]

Project management panache packs a punch when project managers are perceived as “having expertise in a critical area.” Andrew Meyer pressed this powerful point in response to the first blog on panache.
Expertise is defined as providing unique interpretations and insight (readmore). Andrew also posited that this is the may be the only protection against project [...]

My prodigiously prolific project management peers have several deliciously witty answers to the question; “what provides a project manager with the panache needed to stand strong in tough situations?” yet, none walked away with the text book answer. A textbook answer is. . . . (can you hear the drum roll crescendo?)
•    Context in which [...]