Miscellaneous

By Kuntal Thakore • December 21st, 2009

As a member of PM PM SIG group, I recently attended breakfast session on Using Mind Maps for Risk Management.  The presentation was good. It would have been even better if presenter’s brand new laptop worked to display his slides/Mind Map templates. We ended up spending quite a bit of time out of an hour [...]

Over the years, I have worked with, for and managed a spectrum of management talent. A good manager can make a huge difference to the bottom line and influence the actions of an entire organization or program. They are at the center of driving business success.
Yet too often, I still hear phrases like [...]

We are all very much aware that how a team feels makes a huge difference to their productivity and to business results.  Many of us have been on A-teams, as well as on D-teams.  It was the same you, in two different teams – with two vastly different results.  If we take that experience and [...]

We’ve all had to surmount project communication challenges at some point in our job functions. We are in a world of globally dispersed teams where we sometimes never get to see each other. Naturally, email communication is often deemed a convenient method to get messages across without having to work around team schedules. However, a badly [...]

Have you seen soccer teams come together? Soccer is very much a team sport. Players use their individual talents to advance the ball towards the goal, but ultimately pass to others on their team who are in a better position to score. In doing so, they sacrifice their moment in the spotlight for the good of [...]

It’s that time of year! About now, most companies embark upon a yearly performance appraisal process to provide feedback, deliver praise or criticism, and set the stage for the upcoming year(s). This is a somewhat rigid and heavily scrutinized HR activity. What can a leader do to motive their teams outside the confines of this process? Here [...]

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’ve already written that Poka Yoke means “Do it right the first time.”  But, how about doing the right thing?  How much of our time do we spend doing things that are not helping us reach any of our goals?   A lot!   Now, I’m not suggesting we stop having recreation or relaxation – those are [...]

Now, where was I?  Did I do that already?  Oops, I entered those figures twice.  Hold on a minute, I need to finish this.  Oh, damn, I almost hit that car, didn’t see him change lanes.
Aren’t I wonderful, I can do several things at once.  What’s that you say, none of my deliverables are complete?
Well, [...]

What do I mean by “doing more with less” – I mean focus.  We are so busy multi-tasking that we are actually accomplishing less even though we think we are doing twelve things at once.  By paying attention to what you are doing, rather than scattering your attention, you don’t have to come back and [...]

Poka Yoke is the Japanese phrase for “Do it right the first time!”  I love the phrase because I am often telling clients, friends, and children to slow down, put their eyes where their hands are and focus on what they are doing.
All too often I see workers doing one thing, thinking another, and looking [...]

Hi everyone – It’s my turn to blog this week and I am hoping to create two themes. The First: Doing More with Less. The second: Poka Yoke.
So let’s start: As anyone in Project Management knows, you need to balance talent, resources, time and deliverables. How do you accomplish [...]

I and the rest of the PMI New Media council had the opportunity to interview the editors of “Project Management Circa 2025;” David I. Cleland, PhD, PMI Fellow, and Bopaya Bidanda, PhD. This is a collaborative effort by 41 authors to predict the state of various parts of the project management discipline and how it will be implemented 15 years in the future.

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 [...]

Reasoning by Analogy
To reason by analogy; recognize a past experience is similar to the current situation, evaluate what did and didn’t work in the past situation, make a choice about what to do and definitely not do.  Certainly analogical reasoning differentiates the novice from the grizzled veteran PM, based on the sheer number of [...]

Mental Frames
A mental framework is the model we use to simplify the complex and ambiguous world around us; it contains our assumptions on how the world works, our values and our beliefs.  In actuality we have multiple mental frames, one or more dealing with each aspect of life, some competing.
Consider your PM frame, if I [...]

Cognitive Biases
A totally rational person (enter Mr. Spock) would collect a lot of information, analyze many alternatives and only then arrive at the best decision.  However, what we typically do is ration our time by using shortcuts, like rules of thumb, past experiences, recent events, etc.; we satisfice.  Because we are not totally rational human [...]

Today, it’s all about doing things differently and doing different things.  Did you know Google runs 50 to 200 search experiments at any given time?
Innovation and creativity is the lifeblood of growth – organizations who think differently and act quickly are the ones who will break from the pack.  Successful project leaders drive the change [...]

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 [...]