Happiness: The Secret Sauce for Productivity
After nearly 50 years of being actively involved in the profession of project management in roles of individual contributor, project manager, functional manager and consultant it has consistently come to my attention that many of the people I encounter do not seem to enjoy what they do. In fact, The Conference Board Job Satisfaction Study […]
Lesson in stakeholder management from Mr. Rogers
I was listening to two of my friends on a podcast and there were so many stories and lessons in there that I just had to share with you.
5 Secrets to Effective Decision Making
Author: Karin Hurt, Founder and CEO of Let’s Grow Leaders, LLC “Jane,” a senior exec working to build leadership throughout her team, looked up from her salad and confided. “Karin, the truth is I have so many things going on in any given day, I may not remember the exact decision I made if it was […]
What your resume says about you
Resumes, I’ve seen a few… Over the last many years, I would often stand on stage at speaking engagements in the D.C. area and say, “If you’ve been in the job market in the last 15 years, I’ve seen your resume!” I was speaking to project and program managers and PMO leaders, but this applies […]
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR: Best Practices are a Destination, not a Start-Point
Author: Douglas Brown, Author, “Let It Simmer: Making Project, Portfolio and Program Management Practices Stick in a Skeptical Organization” www.simmer-system.com Why are so many organizations having such a hard time implementing practices that at bottom are not much more than simple common sense? The image accompanying this post is that of Sisyphus, who must endlessly carry […]
Stop playing with toys – where many PMO leaders are getting stuck
There are several building blocks necessary for a PMO to be successful. To keep things simple for this post, let’s focus on the general categories people, processes and tools. Everyone knows you need people in your PMO or playing the PMO roles to make it a PMO (even if there is only one of you […]
Your role as a sponsor: A letter on behalf of your project manager
What does it mean to be a project sponsor? What is expected of me? Why can’t they just do the project without getting me involved? Here’s the deal. If you are the sponsor for a project, you are the most important, number one factor in determining success or failure of the project. Yep, that’s right. […]
Haters be hatin’
What do you think when you see someone that is successful? Do you think… I want to be like that! I could be like that if… GOOD For them! They aren’t that great They didn’t get there on their own Their motivations are not pure
Don’t do the dishes
I was making breakfast this morning and put a bowl in the sink and noticed a handful of other dirty dishes in the sink. I dislike dirty dishes in the sink, but I dislike doing dishes more. I considered doing them, but then thought about all of the other things I needed to do today […]
When good projects go bad
What? Some projects don’t go well? No way!! 🙂 OK, so clearly they do. Not ours, of course, but other people’s projects sometimes don’t work out as intended. I know it’s natural human behavior to not want to be at fault or have a project not doing so well, but sometimes, despite our best efforts, […]