Leadership and the Project Manager-Critical Skills for Success and a New e-Book

Great project managers are also great leaders. The best of the project managers are senior contributors that understand their role is more about helping the group succeed than it is about conducting status meetings and revising and distributing reports. My new e-Book, Leadership and the Project Manager—Developing the Skills that Fuel High Performance, was written to serve as a “Quick-Start” to developing as a senior contributor for anyone (certified or not) that is charged with leading and managing projects.

By |2016-10-22T17:12:09-05:00May 19th, 2009|Career, Leadership, Project Management|5 Comments

Develop Culture Sensing Skills and Take the Blinders Off Of Your Career

One of my greatest career misfires was accepting a role in a firm where I had failed to properly assess the culture. I was blinded by the allure of this successful and global firm and by the sharp people that I met during the interview process. I can think of few skills more important for professionals, product and project managers and other lateral leaders to develop than culture sensing. All of the functional or vocational expertise in the world is for naught if the individual fails to take into account and leverage cultural idiosyncrasies to achieve results and drive performance improvements.

Too Many Projects Chasing Too Few People-It’s Time to Learn to Say No!

One of the themes that I hear consistently in workshops and in discussions with the professionals in my MBA classes is frustration over the propensity of a firm’s leaders to never say “No” to a project. Lacking a viable mechanism to compare, evaluate and select and reject projects, decisions are made based on politics, gut feel and the squeaky customer wheel. The net result of this lack of discipline is that the people doing the work end up overloaded and overwhelmed. They operate in compliance mode, focusing on surviving until the next deadline and adding little creative value or innovation to their activities. You can end this chaos and rebuild your team's morale and effectiveness by building in new systems and proper rigor to project evaluation and selection.

Bicycle Helmets, Texting while Driving and Project Failure

The same traits that drive people to do dumb things that they know can cause personal injury, manifest themselves in the way many organizations pursue projects. Like head injuries from a bicycle fall without a helmet and car accidents due to texting or talking on the phone, every single one of the issues above and the many more that I did not list, are easily prevented by the application of well-established professional project management practices.

By |2016-10-22T17:12:16-05:00January 6th, 2009|Leadership, Project Management, Strategy|3 Comments

Improve Strategy and Execution Planning with Project Management Practices

The application of professional project management practices to the strategic planning and execution program development cycles of an organization can eliminate many of the common pitfalls that derail these programs. While the Project Manager cannot guarantee that the insights and actions developed during strategy are the right ones, he/she can take away the organizational-risk that so often rears its head to doom the best intended initiatives.

By |2016-10-22T17:12:18-05:00November 24th, 2008|Leadership, Leading Change, Project Management, Strategy|0 Comments
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