Global

By asarkar • March 10th, 2010

This is the 2nd of the three articles that discuss about strategies for new project managers to function effectively. The three steps are; understanding top ten reasons of a project failure and how to proactively plan to avoid them, how to have a solid communication plan and how to manage changes. The 2nd article covers the importance of communication and how to create project communicationmanagement plan.

Core competencies are the skills that enable the business to deliver a fundamental customer benefit. It is what causes customers to choose one product over the other. To identify core competencies in a particular company, ask questions such as “why is the customer willing to pay more or less for products or service from one [...]

There is a central theme running through my Project Leadership Thoughts: it is impossible to look at a project as an isolated entity. It’s about people and interactions. And interactions happen throughout the entire social network. Every interaction effects another one.
What does this mean for you, as a professional?
You have to work on [...]

We are working with people from all over the world. Globalization goes together with an increase in transparency of reputations. The Internet introduced deadly transparency.
With an increase in geographical and cultural distance the aspect of “trust” becomes all important. When people have never met, there are two mechanism we can fall back on: [...]

I had a great time in Orlando recently for the 2009 PMI North America Global Congress. The PMI New Media Council did a presentation titled “Why Should You Care About Social Media?”.
Bas De Baar (ProjectShrink), Cornelius Fitchner (PMPodcast), and I (pmStudent) collaborated for our segment of the presentation, focused on demonstrating the use of [...]

It had all the earmarks of a disaster, a real career-sinker of a project. And here was my old friend and former colleague calling me up enthusiastically, on the phone: “Hey Lisa, we need a Technical Project Manager for this start-up I’m working for, in Redwood Shores… you’ll love the project and the team. It’s [...]

As a project leader, part of your job is to inspire people to persevere in pursuit of seemingly impossible goals.  In my work, it’s not part of my job . . . that’s pretty much all I do.  A decade leading projects was the perfect preparation for this work.  Lately I’ve been spending about half [...]

We’re adults, and we like to know “why.” I would like to share some of the whys of information security, so that you can understand why the infosec guys can be so darned stubborn.

Sending an SOS? Need some guidelines or information regarding international project management? You may be ready to launch a global project or you may find yourself in the midst of a big international initiative. Yet you’re missing those extra insights on the cross-cultural challenges faced throughout the project cycle. If you need some extra resources, [...]

How would you translate the innovation culture in the SF Bay Area to a group of international engineering students? Would that include an entrepreneur, a garage, and a creative mind? And the project manager? When invited to organize a road trip to study the SF Bay Area’s role in innovation and technology, I immediately googled [...]

Sitting through a debate session at the European Commission’s conference on creativity and innovation, I wondered how this very conservative and structured assembly would harness creative ideas. Glancing at the serious faces surrounding me, I wondered if I had arrived at the right event. One of the panel speakers must have read my mind as [...]

Despite all of the doom and gloom of the global economy, there is still a ray of light that reminds us of the possibilities ahead. See this moment as an opportunity to create and innovate across cultures. Yes, we still need to manage our projects and organizations with thrift and efficiency. However, that’s not going [...]

Hi, It’s my time to blog again – and this is my birthday week – so I am going to take advantage of it and have some fun.
Just to let you know:  I am currently teaching at Keller School of Management.  Teaching several MBA courses which include Leadership & Organizational Development, Business Planning, and International [...]

   Global projects.  Teams in five different time zones.  Team members traveling.  “We will meet again on the telcon at 5 on Tuesday.”
When?  Tuesday your time?  my time?
Some of us may have a calendar system that automatically can communicate and translate date/time.  Wonderful (and horrible in other ways that we won’t go into here).
Unfortunately, [...]

I recently spent 4 days working in Mexico for the first time.  Eye-eye-eye!  What a place!  There wasn’t a Taco Bell in sight.  The tequila was more aromatic than the most savory brandy, and the seafood was as fresh as a daisy, served raw like the sushi in Japan, but with incredible spices and sauces [...]

When I worked at HP/Agilent back in the 1990’s we focused mostly on the US market and a bit on Europe. Now my friends who still work there are making frequent visits to India, China and Poland, markets that were too minuscule to warrant any significant R&D budget, and certainly not personal visits more [...]

Leading virtual teams requires a unique set of competencies to master in addition to the traditional project management tools/techniques. The book “Mastering Virtual Teams” by Duarte & Snyder provides a great set that I promote in my training seminars:

Coaching & managing performance without traditional forms of feedback
Selecting and appropriately using electric communication and collaborative technologies
Leading [...]

The challenge of managing virtual projects is amplified by a complexity factor equal to the number of cultures represented on your team. When you start doing the computations based on the different cultures related to nationality, company, functional discipline, age and caste you can quickly realize why you and your peers heads are spinning when [...]

The accelerated pace of globalization has made the need for virtual teams essential. The list of benefits that corporate executives tout to stockholders and channel partners is accelerated time to market, customer intimacy, resource utilization, employee retention and cost efficiency, to name a few. The challenge lies at the feet of project managers around the [...]