real-world

Recently, like all too many people these days, I found myself in the position of needing to find a new job.  Now before you give up on this blog I promise not to rant on about how bad things are; rather I’ll talk about a topic that came to mind while I was preparing for [...]

Imagine this: it’s Monday, and a co-worker had a rough weekend with his family. He wants to talk about it. What to do?
On the one hand, I want to help out. I mean I’ve been there, I’ve had my tough times, and it’s nice when I’ve had someone to talk with. Not for hours, just [...]

(Posted anonymously on behalf of a program engineering manager at a fine, upstanding organization where it would be best if his name was not used.)
Things are going well on the home front. I am beginning to draw a lot of correlations between parenting a newborn and succeeding at work. A few examples:
1) [...]

Managing projects, as I keep repeating, is about managing people and problems.  I have a great example of a manager who handled a customer situation ideally.  I was the customer.

Technorati Tags: best-practices, crisis, customer-service, Execution, Leaderhip, real-world, treating-people-well

Someone asked me recently “How do I know whether I’m using ‘just enough’ project management on my project?”
My thoughts went immediately to the environments I’ve witnessed or experienced on projects – because the use of too much or too little project management typically shows up in the emotional state of the team. I refer to [...]

Last week I led a workshop aimed at project managers who are ‘beyond the basics’ and looking to take a next step in their skill-set, their ability to handle the projects on their plates and get the desired outcomes in the face of the very messy real world. They had led projects long enough (generally [...]

I often present the ten pieces of a puzzle that comprise an environment for successful projects.  The pieces, however, will not stay together without glue. The glue has two vital ingredients:  authenticity and integrity.  Authenticity means that managers really mean what they say.  Integrity means that they really do what they say they will do, [...]

I loved Kimberly’s blog entry of Jan 14.  Why do we keep making the same mistakes on every project?  Why is it that we can write the “lessons learned” even before the project has begun?

Technorati Tags: Lessons Learned, project-management, real-world, Risk

This week we’ve covered two powerful tools to determine when trust is appropriate.
  
1. Invest time in getting to know people.  You’ll get valuable information that will inform your future interactions. Plus, you’ll be more familiar to each other, and more capable of collaborating effectively.  
 
2. Ask “Is trust appropriate here?” 
This way you can choose a smart [...]

Many years ago I was the manager for a large website when one day, the phone rang.
On the line was “John” the manager for a new product group within the company. Several weeks prior, a critical member of my team, “Roger”, had asked for formal permission to interview for a position on John’s team.
It was [...]

So this guy goes to an all day workshop on trust. And in the supportive environment of the workshop, he sees that it’s safe to trust. Through the activities of the day, he learns to open up to others, to be vulnerable. After a full and satisfying day, he leaves the workshop feeling great. A [...]

Has working on a project ever made you so mad that you wanted to commit murder? Has one demagogue in a power position seemed bent on sabotaging your project? Have you been forced to lead a project that you knew was destined to crash and burn? If so, you can relate to the protagonist in [...]

In my many years of running projects I have often looked back and asked why it was always so difficult to get things done. Every time the answer came back, “It’s the stupid people from the top to the bottom.” Of course, I also made mistakes, but it was mostly their fault”. This reminds me [...]

In Flocks and Swarms – The End of Control As We Know It

(blogs.cio.com, Tuesday, October 24, 2006), Michael Hugos asks, “What makes a flock of birds or a school of fish move as if they are a single entity? What makes them all suddenly rise, turn and accelerate at the same time? There is something [...]

Would you do it again?  Is it time to stop?  For me I think the answer is I’d never have that kind of energy and chutzpah again, not for some random faceless corporate projects anyway, and yes, it’s time to stop.  So yeah, after hitting the glass ceiling both in terms of title and salary [...]

 You too can do everything wrong! And you can do it well. Let us share the wisdom of slinking by in   corporate America. Here’s the first entry up there in the “Bad Project Management Olympics”. The question is do you have the story to top it? I believe this one should be very topable however [...]

I am, at heart, an analyst. There is nothing that would please me more than being able to shut my door and do some thinking and come up with plans and processes — then wait for the good results to come in. Of course, there is a major flaw: people. No, the people aren’t flawed [...]

There are myriad sources of info about how project management should be done in the ideal world. The real world is something else.
Projects are MESSY! From the minute the project begins all manner of changes, surprises and disasters befall them. Even when a project is carefully planned and properly kicked off, the plan changes before [...]