Organizational Leadership

By Randall Englund • May 4th, 2012

When he does not get the results he desires, the singer of a classic song asks the question, “What kind of fool am I?”  Or when entering an unfamiliar structure or organization, a person may ask, “What kind of place is this?”  Both questions move the questioner into a new stage of learning or development. [...]

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 [...]

Enhancing PMP with Business Process Excellence Part II (of an III Part Series) Validating Project Timelines against Expected Changes in Customer Requirements Dr. Shree Nanguneri and Mr. Gustav Toppenberg Background for “Changes in Customer Requirement:” In Part I we initiated discussions on how the KPI needs to link with the business goals and objectives.  In [...]

AMP = Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose. Now this is a power-packed acronym! These three words power the engine within us that takes us to greater heights, and help us achieve self-actualization in the personal and professional environment. Located at the peak of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy, self-actualization is described in the following way: “What a man can [...]

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.

Let’s get out of the dark ages and admit what we know. Project manager is a misnomer. We don’t manage projects, we drive change. Set aside the process and tactics associated with projects and you will easily separate those who manage projects versus those who lead. Leadership is not about your credentials or accomplishments; it’s [...]

I recently had the opportunity to speak to an audience of PMO leaders. The event is designed to support PMO leaders through the exchange of best practices and expert advice. Interestingly, the majority of attendees this year were quite novice – over 55% of workshop participants had less than one year experience establishing or managing [...]

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 [...]

As you learn about project management, one critical thing to absorb is to trust your sense about situations.  This may not be something that you’ll learn about in most trainings or school or from many mentors – but it’s critical.   By “your sense”, I mean your intuition, the gut feel you may have about a [...]

A lot goes on around me as I’m working on any project and I’ve learned is to pay attention to things at the corners of my focus: little comments at the end of a statement are one of the most important – what I call watching out of the corner of my ear. A lot [...]

I’ve learned a lot about project management as a result of the trainings and schooling I’ve had.  But one thing I was never taught was that in any almost any work situation, relationship trumps everything. I can bring a project in late.  I can bring a project in over budget.  I can expand the scope [...]

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 [...]

If I ever hear “Well – could you make a baby in one month with nine mothers?” again – I will scream.  Personally, I average four months per baby with my preemie twins.  Because designing is so costly, looking for twin opportunities – more often called “design re-use” – is a very sensible plan. In [...]

We can study about risk management. We can take classes on steps for risk assessments. We can learn about using probability and impact to prioritize our hazard lists. But it’s experience that streamlines our risk assessment process. With experience we can quickly list only the relevant risks. Its experience that automatically eliminates the low probability and low impact items. The unnecessary items become invisible and therefore free time to focus on the more important items.

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 [...]

Here’s another article in this series where I squeeze meaning out of seemingly purposeless tragedy. When I landed in Tokyo 2 weeks ago – my first trip here since the quake – I wondered what signs of the recent disaster might be evident. As the bus made its way from the airport into town I [...]

I’ve managed projects in F100 companies and in small companies. There are positives and negatives in both but sometimes I pine for the other one, the one I’m not currently at. In a large company there’s usually an entire infrastructure organization to support the project manager. From financial analysts (accountants) who know their job to [...]

How do you schedule innovation? A common conflict, even in a well planned and organized environment is marketing’s request for a new feature yesterday versus engineering’s expectation for it to take weeks to months, or even years to deliver.  In addition to the starting point gap in availability, it is extremely difficult to accurately estimate [...]

Personal skills are those vital interaction competencies for dealing with people.  The complete project manager possesses the aptitude, attitude, and networking skills to interact with people and achieve results. Early in our careers, we demonstrated negative attitudes regarding our jobs and towards the projects we managed. That negative disposition generated more problems than advantages.  We [...]

Leadership and management skills are those vital visionary and “can do” competencies so necessary when in a position to influence colleagues, team members, upper managers, clients, and so forth.  The complete project manager possesses the lead by example, delegation, charisma, teachability, respect, qualities of leadership, courage, listening, and relationship building skills to interact with people [...]

This week I preview material that has occupied much of my time over the last few months—writing about The Complete Project Manager—the title of the next book that Alfonso Bucero and I co-author.  Success in any environment largely depends upon completing successful projects, and successful projects get done by skilled project managers and teams, supported [...]