group-communication

I was recently working with some relatively young (well, pretty much everyone seems to be younger these days) software developers beginning to make a transition into project management.  As we were going over some of the PM responsibilities and tools, one of them asked, “A lot of this sounds like selling.  Don’t we want to [...]

The applause was thundering as the magician completed his performance. Proman A. Jecgert had hired the magician to help celebrate the completion of what would come to be called Phase One. The party included all participants across the organization. The grove in the trees was a perfect setting, and the sun shone [...]

The escalation process worked! As work on the program drifted past the scheduled completion date, Proman sensed the pressure coming from across the organization. Managers wanted their engineers back to work on product development, not on solving broad reaching technical issues. But the impasse was real. Development could not continue (or [...]

“To err is human, to forgive divine”, therefore is cursing and swearing considered an acceptable human err in a workplace? In my past 12 years as a program manager, cursing and swearing have never being absent in all my projects. But as a project manager, where do you stand on this?

Technorati Tags: communication, diversity, [...]

Quick: what’s the biggest challenge in cross-functional collaboration?  Bing!  Yes, “building trusting, open relationships” is correct!  Does that sound too Oprah-esque?  Let’s think about it for a minute.  How do you build trusting, open relationships in your cross-functional team, and why does it matter?
Let’s start with why it matters.  How successful will your collaboration be if each [...]

“The concept of teamwork often gets turned into some fluffy, warm and fuzzy ‘thing’ that no one quite knows what to do with … a bunch of people working together in unadulterated harmony or even outright bliss. Great if you can get it but not something I’ve seen a huge amount of….”

A short while ago, our fearless leader, Kimberly, wrote about the six hats.  I thought I’d add a little to her suggestions.  The technique, called “Six Thinking Hats”  comes from a book by the same name written by E. deBono. (Boston, Little, Brown & Company, 1985)
The beauty of the technique is that it helps participatns [...]

Why are we so afraid of disagreement?  Do we always have to “go along to get along” even if we think our team is making a bad decision?  How can we constructively disagree without being labeled “a bad-a..”?   I believe, as did Andy Grove, in constructive criticism.

Technorati Tags: Conflict, conflict-resolution, group-communication, project-management, speaking-out