From Voices on Project Management:
By Lynda Bourne
Calculating a project cost estimate is the easy bit. Having the estimate accepted by either a client or your management—or both—and then delivering your project on budget is far more difficult.
The technical processes involved in developing a realistic and achie…
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I’ve always said that the measure of a good team isn’t how they operate when everything goes right – its how they conduct themselves when they face adversity. Do you look at issues as problems or as opportunities for excellence? In his book, Adversity Quotient: Turning Obstacles into Opportunities, author Paul Stoltz defines the three levels of adversity as Individual, Workplace, and Societal and represents them in a pyramid. The individual is on the bottom level, illustrating how workplace and societal pressures can crush us if we cannot climb to the top. It also shows that, “positive change at all three levels starts with you, the individual, and works up, affecting the workplace, and ultimately society-at-large”. (Stoltz, 1999).
Can you describe an occasion when your team has faced adversity and you have been the positive change that influenced the group to face it head on?
Stoltz, P. (1999). Adversity quotient: turning obstacles into opportunities. New York: Wiley.
From Voices on Project Management:
By Conrado Morlan
When it comes to project management, Murphy’s Law often rings true: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. So it’s up to project leaders to be ready and willing to pivot at a moment’s notice. And it’s a lesson learned that I’ve taken from a numbe…
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Cyndee Miller poses a challenging question when she asks if projects can simultaneously bring back the economy and protect the earth. Lester Brown seemed to have the same challenge on his mind when he wrote in his book, Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth, “transforming our environmentally destructive economy into one
that can sustain progress depends on a Copernican shift in our economic mindset, a recognition that the economy is part of the earth’s ecosystem and can sustain progress only if it is restructured so that it is compatible with it” as well as, “it is up to governments to foster the national vision of an eco-economy and to adopt the ecologically-defined economic policies needed to build it. This will require a systematic effort to incorporate input from ecologists in economic policy formulation, especially in restructuring taxes and subsidies to help the market reflect the ecological truth” (Brown, 2003).
Do you agree with Brown’s admonishments and advisories?
Brown, L. R. (2003). Eco-economy: Building an economy for the Earth. London: Earthscan.
From Voices on Project Management:
By Cyndee Miller
Climate change … heralded as the greatest and most pressing existential threat to humankind.
Or rather, it was … until COVID-19.
With the world at a virtual standstill, greenhouse gas emissions plummeted, air quality shot up and ecosystems thrived sans interve…
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I remember reading Snyder & Duarte’s definition of innovation from their book, Strategic Innovation: Embedding Innovation as a Core Competency in Your Organization: “any product or service that creates unique and compelling solutions valued by our customers, real and sustainable competitive advantages, and extraordinary value for our shareholders” (Snyder & Duarte, 2003). Like organizations, top performing teams must be energized by delivering value to their shareholders, and its been my experience that transformational leadership powers these efforts. Along with the factors that Aaron smith cites in his blog post, I’ve found that it is important to be able to tap into a broad knowledge network – breaking down organizational silos and even going beyond the walls of the organization for advice. Secondly: prototype, prototype, prototype! Get eyes on the design as early in the process as possible as take note of how your story is communicated through-out the organization. You want to make sure that story is that you are creating new things – not just doing the same, old things better.
What ways do you overcome barriers to innovation in your organization?
Snyder, N. T., & Duarte, D. L. (2003). Strategic innovation: Embedding innovation as a core competency in your organization. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
From Project Management.com Blogs:
What, in your experience, are the biggest barriers to driving an innovation from within?
This is the question Dr. Kaihan Krippendorff asked 150 “internal innovators”—employees leading innovation efforts within their organizations— over the course of three years while …
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Marat Oyvetsky points out a number of considerations critical to successful completion of international projects during these challenging times. In my opinion, these tips are equally relevant for domestic projects, as well. In particular, increasing team meeting frequency may be necessary. Frequent, formal communication may be required to replace the spontaneous, ad-hoc discussions that may have taken place around the water cooler or passing by a colleague’s office door. Try to schedule in some time for brainstorming sessions and see where they lead…
From Voices on Project Management:
By Marat Oyvetsky, PMP
Global companies often struggle to get international projects across the finish line because they have to mitigate risks or issues that are outside of typical budgeting and resource availability constraints. In many cases, companies must work through issues such as language…
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Great post from Yasmina Khelifi about making the most of any free time you may have during the week and leveraging technology you may already be using to boost your skillset. If you find that you don’t necessarily have the bandwidth to devote, how about scheduling in some personal improvement time in your future calendar?
What are the best online platforms you’ve used for learning? What are the pros and cons?
From Voices on Project Management:
By Yasmina Khelifi, PMP
As the world works to return to some sense of normalcy, you, like many others, may find yourself spending more time on your digital devices than ever before. Whether it’s completing work tasks, communicating virtually with project teams or staying in touch with famil…
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A key point for me from Dave Wakeman’s post about what leaders can learn from the current crisis is the idea that it matters how you lead in troubled times. How often do we take an inventory of the leadership skillset available to us? Routinely? Rarely? And how often do we put in work to refine those skills? Like any good emergency preparedness plan, we need to constantly review how we have dealt with crisis in the past and update our skills accordingly. Do we solicit feedback from project members that will help ameliorate our leadership qualities? Do we create a strong sense of community that can weather future storms? A decent amount of preparation will help provide order even during the most chaotic of times.
From Voices on Project Management:
By Dave Wakeman
As you may have noticed, my attention during the pandemic has been largely focused on the lessons we can all learn about leadership.
Why mess with a good thing? So, I’ll continue to focus on leadership this month, since the lessons are still popping up fast and furi…
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A rule of thumb from Al Pittampalli’s brilliantly succinct book, “Read This Before Our Next Meeting” that I try to follow is that a meeting should support a decision that has already been made. We’ve all sat in meetings that seem like a Möbius strip of due diligence. I try and solicit opinion via email before a meeting, come to a preliminary conclusion, and present that in the meeting. More often than not it streamlines the ensuing discussion, and saves a lot of wasted time and effort. What are some strategies you’ve found to make meetings more effective?
From Voices on Project Management:
By Emily Luijbregts
Is a full calendar a sign of an effective leader? Does having lots of meetings make you a better project manager?
I’d answer “no” to both of those questions. For several years, I rushed through days where I’ve barely had time to think as I went from …
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By Emily Luijbregts
Is a full calendar a sign of an effective leader? Does having lots of meetings make you a better project manager?
I’d answer “no” to both of those questions. For several years, I rushed through days where I’ve barely had time to think as I went from …
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From Voices on Project Management:
By Lenka Pincot
When crisis strikes, the first thing we’d like to do is quickly re-prioritize, re-assign resources to the activities that provide the most value under the current circumstances and materialize the benefits as soon as possible. While this may be a distant dream for …
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