change

We’ve all experienced change.  In fact, we lead and manage change everyday as project and program managers.  Anita Wotiz did a terrific blog on Practical Change Management last week that provided a framework on planning and tracking to insure that the change is completed and successful.
Let’s consider what environment we are in right now: significant [...]

That requirements will change is a given. How you plan for and manage that change is crucial. Think about what you want to accomplish with your change management, what you want to protect yourself from, what you want to avoid, and then put in place the practice that makes sense for you.
Having a [...]

At my last company we took pride in the amount of work we were able to accomplish with a very small team – software of high quality and releases on tight schedules. The high quality and the responsiveness to customers’ demand for new features kept our customer support expenses low and gave us good [...]

I just returned from hearing Carly Fiorini (former CEO of HP) speak at Celebrity Forum. She defined leaders as those who made change – who see an opportunity and seize the opportunity.
Leaders have the vision to make changes.  Managers deliver within a set of (I can’t think of her word but mine is – parameters.)  Leaders [...]

Image by Łukasz Strachanowski via FlickrOur theme of this week was “living life smarter”. We started with defining SMART goals and reflecting on where we are now. Then we looked at setting priorities so we use our limited time and finances wisely. Focusing on the highest priority items that give us the most value for [...]

Oh yeah, more anecdotal data tells me silicon valley wants SO MUCH MORE for so much less!

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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 organizations is like leading a swarm of bees. You can’t directly control what’s going on, and the statistics indicate that most organizational leaders aren’t doing a very good job of it. A Harris Poll found that only 15% of people knew their orgs most important goals, over half of employees don’t know [...]

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 [...]

Saying “no” is hard for everyone.
“If I say “no”, they will think I’m not a team player.”
“If I say “no”, they will think I’m not committed to the product’s (company’s) success.”
“If I say “no”, they will blame me for the other project’s failure (because I wouldn’t let my resource spend some time helping it).”
“If I [...]

Here’s one of those really good (and at the same time really irritating) questions to ask yourself – why is it that I know so much more than I actually do when I want to be successful at something?  This time of year always reminds me that even though I know the plan for just [...]

Why are questions so powerful?  Because the beginnings of change are in the questions we ask, and the best thing we can ask is often “What is the question I should be asking?”

Technorati Tags: change, communication, koans, Leadership, Lessons Learned, questions, Retrospectives

Does your team seem to be allergic to process?  Have you been trying to implement project management best practices and meeting resistance? 
If so, have you addressed your team’s inherent questions, like “How will this make my life better?” and “Is that improvement enough to merit the hassle of changing?”  Have you explained how this will [...]

In the Dance of Change by Senge, et. al., the authors present five disciplines for individuals and teams to study and practice that enable organizational learning. The disciplines are Personal Mastery, Mental Models, Shared Vision, Team Learning, and Systems Thinking. Today I thought it might be useful to explore one of these, Mental Models.

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