Really Bad Career Advice:

A friend embarking on a next-step job search initiated a conversation with the recruiter she had used for hiring purposes for several years.  While most of the conversation was spent listening to how horrible his business was, he finally listened to my friend’s next steps plan and offered up this priceless advice.  “You may just have to face up to the fact that your career is over.”

My friend is an experienced, passionate leader with impeccable credentials, current certifications, great management experience and technical skills in a hot industry.

The recruiter must have been talking to himself.

Project Management Success-It’s the People, Stupid!

The most complex part of project management is not mastering the tools or the Project Management Body of Knowledge. It’s all about leading people.

Organizations interested in improving project performance are well-served to improve selection, coaching and mentoring and yes, even training so that their project managers develop critical experience in dealing with the most complex of all projects…the human participant.

Speaking of Project Management-Regarding the PMP Certification Exam:

“It’s the most god-awful test I’ve ever taken.”  -Master degreed nurse and operations executive on her recent, successful certification.

More than a few have indicated that this increasingly important certification is a test of your ability to take a test. Hmmmm.

Read Somewhere-A Great Idea for Improving Your Decision-Making Effectiveness:

Attributed to the late, great Peter Drucker, his suggestion was to develop the habit of writing down and filing your rationale for a major decision and then reviewing this document six to nine months down the road to find out how wrong you were.

I love this idea for the learning opportunity as well as for the expected shock value of, What was I thinking?!”

Social Networking-Everyone’s Shouting, But is Anyone Listening?

Spend a few minutes observing a twitter-stream and you’ll notice that interaction has all but disappeared in the noise of people shouting about something.  It’s like 20 million people on a street corner all hawking a newspaper with a different headline at the same time.

Here’s to creating more high quality conversations and interactions….likely off Twitter and on something old-fashioned, like a telephone.

—