Leadership

By Terrie Mui • October 8th, 2009

The approach to Risk Management can also be used for Opportunity Management by using a different point of view.

Organizational Project Management (OPM) is the systematic management of projects, programs, and portfolios in alignment with the organization’s strategic business goals according to PMI.

Launching this Friday, Project Management Institute (PMI) has a new community, the Organizational Project Management (OPM) Community of Practice (COP.) It is a virtual community of project management professionals that will talk about how to integrate project, program, portfolio management practices with the management infrastructure of an organization.

The absolute minimum criteria for any successful project manager is having a track record of delivering projects on time and on budget. Increasingly project managers are no longer solely evaluated on project performance, but they also need business acumen and organizational agility to survive industry and organizational upheavals.  
So what is business acumen? According to [...]

I don’t believe leadership is about your accomplishments or credentials.  It’s about your presence.  It’s what’s inside that makes you stand out.  Leadership is often defined by how others view you.

Technorati Tags: Leadership, leadership-skills

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 about your [...]

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, [...]

One of the reasons I got into Project Management in the first place is that I’ve always been interested in people – their personalities, where they are from, what makes them tick.
Growing up overseas in Japan, I attended an international school for foreigners, and there were kids from all over the world – kids whose [...]

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 [...]

Key success behavior #5:  “Do the right thing”, really wraps a pretty bow around all of the previous blogs on this topic this past week, and a great many more critical leadership behaviors that I haven’t mentioned at all.  Although incomplete, all together I think the five are an impressive list:
Keep Your Promises
Don’t Lie
Don’t [...]

This is an extension of my last blog about “Don’t Blame Others”.  Today I am not only urging you not to blame other people – don’t play the victim by blaming anything at all for your problems and failures.  For many years I thought that my troubles were caused by external forces.  My career didn’t [...]

Key success behavior #3:  Don’t blame others.  It’s not that other people aren’t responsible for a lot of the crap that you have to clean up as a project leader.  It’s just that blaming them doesn’t help fix the situation, and worse – it diminishes your personal power.  I have continued to lead projects only [...]

Well, this shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone, but I’m sorry to say I felt the need to put this one out there as one of the keys to success as a project leader.
Key success behavior #2:  Don’t Lie.  I recently had lunch with someone who’d been lied to by her manager three [...]

In honor of summer, I’m going to keep this week’s series of blogs bite-sized so you can get back to your beach and margaritas lickity split.  This week I’ll review a few behaviors that are key to success as a project leader.
Key success behavior #1:  Keep your promises.  Sorry if this seems trivial.  I bring [...]

I thought this would be a great topic for a Friday! It gives you the weekend to ponder it.
Last Friday I attended my first World Café. World Café Conversations are a way to create a network of conversations around important questions. Based on a set of design principles, Café Conversations link and build on each [...]

If you ask 10 project managers to give a definition of their role, you most likely will end up with 10 different descriptions ranging from project admin and task master to program manager. In marketing terms, our profession has an image problem: there is no standard job description and most people have no clue what [...]

I am very avid diver here in the cold California waters. If at all possible I dive every weekend. Diving is not an extremely dangerous sport, however, decisions I make before, during and after the dive form the foundation of mine and my buddies safety and survival every dive. Making a good decision relies heavily [...]

Have you thought about the environment in your projects? Yes, even if you have NO wind turbines, solar cells, or cars that run on used french-fry oil in your project. Have you? Well, consider this posting as a start.

Project Management Institute (PMI) is currently reviewing a business case to start a new Virtual Community (VC) on Organizational Project Management. It is anticipated that PMI(r) will launch this VC in the fall of ’09. This community will provide information to project management practitioners. This VC will also target organizational business management leaders on topics [...]

Are you having fun yet?  I have recently been moderating a discussion about management, leadership, and team building in a project and program environment.  Let me share a few of the comments recorded so far.  On the topic of what makes for project success—is fulfilling the triple constraints enough?—I provided a high level summary view [...]

The posts by Ed Gaeta this last week plus our most recent poll results reminded me of a mental image I developed years ago for why I enjoyed being a project manager so much. After many successful and rewarding years as an electrical engineer, why would I want to move away from hands-on technology to [...]