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{ Author Archives }

Moving to Mac Land

I’m leaving the mountains and valleys of Microsoft Land for the beautiful beaches of Mac Land. It’s been a more gradual switch than I’ve let anyone see. First, I switched to Firefox as my internet browser. Then I made the move to Thunderbird as my email client. Both of these programs are open source and […]

Featured as Guest Author

I’m so excited! I’m the guest author on a wonderful blog, Life by Design, http://www.officiallifebydesign.com/. Please feel free to visit the blog. The blog title is How do You SPEND Your Time? And the article title is Spending Time. If you like the article, please let your friends and colleagues know about it.

Project Managers vs. Executives – Part 3

or What do the Dumb-dumbs in the executive offices know? In the first two parts of this series, we learned how to decide which executive to start building a relationship with, and what we need to do in order to advocate project management processes in our company. In this final part of the series, we’ll […]

Project Managers vs. Executives – Part 2

or What do the Dumb-dumbs in the executive offices know? In part 1 we learned how to decide which executive to start building a relationship with. In this part of the three-part series, we’ll learn the beginning steps about what to do next. Part 2: What Selling is NOT evil. Here are a couple of […]

Project Managers vs. Executives

or What do the Dumb-dumbs in the executive offices know? As project managers, we know that the processes we use are valuable. We want to help our companies to succeed. It makes sense to us that using project management throughout the company will lead to success. No brainer, right? Wrong. Executives see projects as operational […]

Prefer talking to a brick wall than an executive?

Would you rather talk to a brick wall than an executive at your company? Do you wonder why executives don’t have time to talk about project management? Then this call’s for you! I’ll be participating in a conference call hosted by PM Lessons Learned (Henry Will is the founder). Here are the details: Thursday Nov. […]

Leadership – Do followers choose leaders?

In September, I heard Billy Jean King (US tennis player; instrumental in getting laws passed to provide equal opportunities for female sports in high school and college (aka Title 9)) talking about leadership. She said that followers choose leaders. Not the other way around. What do you think?

How do we record project Lessons Learned?

Have you considered implementing a monthly report of Lessons Learned – a mini-newsletter? It’s the idea that I not only offered to companies where I worked, but volunteered to implement it. And it worked quite well. As the Lessons Learned editor, I interviewed each project manager each month. I asked questions, and became trusted by […]

Why are you a project manager?

Are you one of the millions of “accidental” project managers? You were assigned a project and told when it has to be complete? No budget. No other people on the team. Just you, an idea of what the project is, and a deadline. Not a very comfortable place, is it? But for those of us […]

How do you avoid burnout?

As project managers, we often find ourselves looking into the deep, dark hole of burnout. What is burnout? Burnout is the state of mind where we stop being creative, where our physical energy is low, where we can’t imagine doing one more thing, and where we’re very likely cranky and difficult to get along with. […]