Surviving and Thriving with Your Executive Sponsor (podcast)
In this podcast, I share ideas to help the project manager frame, form and manage an effective working relationship with the executive sponsor.
Leadership Caffeine™ for the Project Manager eBook Now Available!
I am excited to announce the launch of my latest book: Leadership Caffeine for the Project Manager (and anyone responsible for leading teams, groups or committees). This e-book only offering is available at Amazon, Apple and Barnes and Noble or at my site. And every purchaser is entitled to a free download copy of my supporting workbook: Power Tools for Project Managers. Use the ideas and approaches in great project, career and team development health!
10 Do’s and Don’ts for the Executive Sponsor
I fumbled through my first go-round as executive sponsor on a project team. Fortunately, a great project manager compensated for my poor performance. Fortunately, some follow-on experiences challenged me to take the role seriously. It turns out, the executive sponsor role is incredibly important to strategic project success. This article shares 10 Do's and Don'ts for anyone stepping into the position.
New Website Launched—New Project Leadership Book Soon!
A number of long-term projects are coming to market in my world, including an all new ground-up website and the forthcoming book and related tools: Leadership Caffeine for the Project Manager. Of course, none of this is possible without the input of clients and readers and the great support from some valued allies!
Just One Thing—Hug a Project Manager
One of the core takeaways my MBA students express after investing 10 weeks immersed in the art and science of this discipline is new found appreciation for the role project managers play in our organizations.
Art of Managing—Helping Your Firm Navigate a Level-Up Situation
As managers, it’s our sacred responsibility to create and continuously improve an environment that allows our people to do their best work. Few managers would disagree with their responsibility and accountability for creating this effective environment. Like breathing, it’s a good idea to invest time and energy in practices that promote a healthy, efficient and effective system. In reality, many firms do a good job on this in stable markets. However, when faced with the need to adapt or change due to market disruptions, too many firms struggle to change their system to support the pursuit of new. Here are 7 ideas to help managers avoid the most common mistakes as they venture forward into uncharted territory:
Art of Managing—How to Respond When the Experiment Goes Wrong
In the most successful firms I’ve been around, the managers actively promote experimentation and learning as core to everyone’s job. Yet, it’s not the words on the wall or even the words that come out of their mouths about experimentation, it’s the actions they take when things go horribly wrong that fosters the effective learning environment. Here are 3 counter-intuitive ideas for turning project failures into lessons learned that stick:
Leadership Caffeine™: Get Your Team Moving on Change
The Leadership Caffeine series is 200 installments strong and is dedicated to every aspiring or experienced leader seeking ideas, insights or just a jolt of energy to keep pushing forward. Thanks for being along for the journey! -- We all know that leading and succeeding with change of any type is hard work. As humans, [...]
Art of Managing—Balancing the Need for Speed AND Performance
With few exceptions that I’ve encountered, most senior leaders lose sleep over how fast their organizations and employees are moving. Their minds and mantras are: faster to change, faster to improve, faster to add new capabilities, faster to explore and develop competence in new markets and with new customer groups. However, at the same time senior leaders are looking for ways for their firms and teams to move faster, most employee groups and their managers are bogged down slogging through the reality of getting stuff done. Here are 3 ideas to help you and your team strengthen the balance between the need for speed and the need for performance:
Just One Thing-Strive to Be a Better Team Participant
There are shelves of books and countless blog posts out there on improving team performance. Last I checked, there isn’t much for us to consume on the topic of improving our performance as team and project participants. Here are 12 ideas on to improve your participation and potentially raise the performance of everyone around you.
