Project Management Best Practice 5 – Define Success First

Projects and the organizations supporting them share a key characteristic; they both deploy human, financial, and material resources to achieve defined goals. So like organizations, projects must have specific goals against which the project manager’s decisions and team member actions are focused. Like mission measures, results-based project goals should be defined before work begins and refined as scope and/or circumstances change. Only when this occurs can a project be effectively managed and efficiently completed.

Leadership Inspirations – Leading by Example

“Example is not the main thing in influencing others; it’s the only thing.” Albert Schweitzer (1875 – 1965) Alsatian theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician “I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.” Thomas Jefferson 3rd President of the United States of […]

Recommended Resources – An Interview with Joel Roth, author of The 20% Solution

The 20% Solution: A Practical Guide to Dramatic Cost Reduction in MROP by Joel Roth The 20% Solution: A Practical Guide to Dramatic Cost Reduction in MROP by Joel Roth examines how businesses of all sizes can effectively exploit cost-cutting opportunities in times of economic recession, increased global competition, and credit and cash flow distress. […]

Management Observation Program Best Practice 2 – Program Alignment with Established Performance Standards

The goal of any observation program is to promote adherence to the performance standard delineated by management in order to consistently achieve superior results. Additionally, observation program credibility exists when those being observed can expect both repeatable evaluations by one manager and consistent evaluations by different managers for a given job performance relative to established standards. Therefore, management observations must be aligned with and focus on those critical standards required to ensure outstanding performance.

StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 12 – An Interview with Nat Stoddard, author of The Right Leader

StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 12 explores the challenges and solutions to selecting executives who possess the needed skills and experiences while also being a good fit with the organization’s culture.

Tactical Execution Best Practice 3 – Timely Reporting of Activity Status

Rarely does unique, creative, or exploratory work complete on-time and on-budget (accounting for personnel, material, and financial resources). Although planners make every effort to accurately predict task needs, the many variables and uncertainties associated with these types of tasks make highly accurate planning nearly impossible. Even highly repetitive tasks can suffer from unforeseeable circumstances that delay their performance or raise costs. Subsequently, buffers are often added to work plans to accommodate for the uncertainty. At times, these buffers aren’t enough. On other occasions, excess time and/or resources remain. Only through timely communication of activity status can managers proactively prioritize and adjust their operations or project plans to accommodate the unknown and recover excess time and resources.

Project Management Best Practice 4 – Team Calendar

Project complexity seems to increase exponentially with team size. Larger teams require greater division of work and additional managers and supervisors to oversee these disparate efforts. Subsequently, the number of meetings increases to coordinate and align efforts between work groups, communication with stakeholders, and gather requirements and ideas from the organization’s subject matter experts. Absent meeting coordination, team members and line organization sponsors and participants become increasingly double and triple booked; causing individual frustration and diminishing the team’s effectiveness credibility.

Management and Leadership – Managing Your Virtual Team

People used to think that “working from home” was code for “getting paid to eat Oreos in pajamas”, but with the recent recession, getting paid at all isn’t anything to take chances with. If you’re engaged in virtual project management you can’t physically just drop in to check on your workers – at least, not […]

StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 11 – An Interview with Marshall Goldsmith, author of Succession

StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 11 – An Interview with Marshall Goldsmith, author of Succession explores the personal issues that arise during executive succession and how to overcome them; achieving a positive outcome for the departing leader, the successor, and the organization.

Leadership Inspirations – A Call for Innovation

“To get what we’ve never had, we must do what we’ve never done.” Anonymous “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Albert Einstein Theoretical physicist, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics (1921) Innovation, the act of introducing a new product, service, and/or method, […]