Project Management Archives

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 Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:45:01-05:00May 19th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|5 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week of March 30, 2009

I’m striking a blow this week against Boss-Blame…that world class sport that so many engage in as part of rationalizing why their own results might just be falling short of something resembling excellence. It's time to engender a new sense of personal and professional accountability in the workplace.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:46:15-05:00March 29th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|3 Comments

What’s Your High Performance Team Experience?

I love to talk with people that have led or been part of a high performance team (HPT). Their enthusiasm is palpable. These individuals have been to the promised land of corporate collaboration and achievement for a brief period in time and they are interested in going back. Unfortunately, my own formal and informal research indicates that only 30% of professionals surveyed would agree that they have been part of a high performance team. If you've been a part of this 30%, the other 70% of your peers would love to hear your story!

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:46:26-05:00March 11th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|4 Comments

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.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:46:34-05:00March 3rd, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|2 Comments

Five Tips for Leading Change When You’re Not In Charge

As I continue on my career respite from managing a business that's not mine, I’m increasingly conscious of the significant gap between the needs and ideas of employees and the attention and interest of senior managers. There are so many remarkable ideas and thoughts on improving performance that never see the light of day that it is staggering. I offer five suggestions for driving change when you're not in charge. I'm hoping that readers will add a few more of their own.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:46:56-05:00January 30th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|2 Comments

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 Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:47:47-05:00January 6th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|3 Comments

Common Sense and the Role of Leadership in Project Management Success

As organizations grow increasingly dependent upon project execution and professional project management practices to drive strategy execution, a firm’s leaders have to be smart enough and engaged enough to recognize an imbalance between process and people. Methodologies are guidelines to be strictly or liberally adhered to depending upon circumstances. Good leadership in this sense means tuning in to project activities at a level sufficient to ensure that the right approaches are being applied for the right reasons. While your methodology might have its champions, don’t lose track of the fact that the methodology must enable success, not fight it.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:49:08-05:00September 4th, 2008|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|1 Comment

The Project Management Discipline of Strategy Execution

Strategy execution is where value is created. The best plans are worthless unless they are backed by a group of people that understand their roles and accountabilities and that have the information they need when they need for rapid decision-making. Execution never takes place in a straight line and without setbacks. In fact, the setbacks are powerful learning experiences that a good team will leverage as it adapts and responds to internal and external factors. A large part of the solution in my opinion is treating execution like a high-order program comprised of a series of projects to be managed. Ask a good Project Manager how to successfully pull of an execution program and I suspect they won't need to interview 1,000 companies.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:49:51-05:00June 23rd, 2008|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments

A Blogging Milestone and What I Learned by Writing 100 Blog Posts

It was a tough week for blogging. A perfect storm of business and personal schedule challenges conspired to keep me from spending quality time on the blog. OK, and the fact that I have been holding steady at 99 posts for a few days, and somehow it seemed like I needed to create something truly remarkable for the milestone, 100th post. I'm over the "need for remarkable" part, but thought I would take a few minutes this Saturday morning to reflect back on what I've learned in this half year of blogging about all things management, leadership, strategy and project and product management.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:50:03-05:00May 31st, 2008|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|2 Comments

Planning to Recognize Failure-The Project Manager’s Guide to Preventing Project Calamity

Every Project Manager with a few years of experience under his or her belt can likely recall at least one example of a major project that lived on long after the plug should have been pulled and the project canceled. The best (or worst) examples are the ego-driven initiatives of top executives that can't let go for fear of losing face by admitting defeat. More than a few organizations have been taken to or pushed over the edge by these self-anointed visionaries bent on changing their corporate world with some grand project. Once invested, they cannot let go, and if left unchecked, the results can be nothing short of disastrous for the organization.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:50:31-05:00May 4th, 2008|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments