Project planning is based on experience and the more experience you have, the more accurate your plan will be. Each PM performs different types of project work, reports on it differently, and uses the schedule for different purposes. To help create reliable, high-quality schedules, a consistent use of best practices is the key.
Supporters of project management templates will try to tell you this is the only way to ensure best practices are embedded in project planning. While templates provide some form of guidelines that ensures information completeness, they have their limitations and drawbacks.
I believe the great part about project templates is that you can use them to start any project as quickly as possible. On the other hand, when you use templates, it introduces a learning mode and establishes rigidity instead of clarity. When templates are used blindly, without discernment, project plans can break down and become meaningless.
Furthermore, templates are static: they cannot guarantee the proper use of best practices while executing the project and making decisions in real-time. And this is the real test: do your best practices and standards ensure project managers will have the proper data, at the right time, to make informed decisions. I think not.
What is the PMO’s ultimate goal?
Put simply: to ensure project success. How to attain such perfection? Through the timely application of best practices and corporate standards. Part of the benefit of using a standard project management process is that project managers have a set of best practices they can use every time.
Are project management best practices being followed to mitigate risks? A project manager who uses best practices should have a higher degree of success than someone who doesn’t. A PMO’s challenge is to ensure conformity to corporate standards. What he/she requires is a conduit between these standards and the project manager. This conduit has to help project managers be better at his/her job by using standards while providing flexibility in their planning.
I believe that project management best practices conformance can be automated. Intelligent automation costs a fraction of the potential costs of project plan deficiencies and can perform project audits at any point in the project’s lifecycle and as often as you like.
Most organizations have a Board of Directors. Carter McNamara, coordinator for this blog site, writes that some common responsibilities of Boards include:
Determine the Organization’s Mission and Purpose
Support the Executive and Review her Performance
Ensure Effective Organizational Planning
Ensure Adequate Resources
Determine the Organization’s Services and Programs
What if you had a Spiritual Board of Directors that provided oversight of your mission, supported you in obtaining resources, helped you plan and manage how you offer yourself in service to others- all doing this with respect to how you are staying connected to your Higher Power?
Some of you may work with an executive coach or a job/life coach. They can be enormously helpful in keeping you moving towards your goals, helping you sort out difficult decisions, or providing guidance on a new path you may be embarking on. They may not be seasoned or experienced in helping you connect your work or life goals with your inspirational Source, your faith, or your alignment with your spiritual center.
According to Liz Budd Ellmann, Executive Director, Spiritual Directors International, spiritual direction helps us learn how to live in peace, with compassion, promoting justice, as humble servants of that which lies beyond all names. Spiritual direction exists in a context that emphasizes growing closer to God (or the holy, mystical, transcendence).
If you are yearning to merge the world of your work with the world of your spirit or Sacred Oneness- How about having a whole team to support your spiritual journey through your work?
Working with a Spiritual Board of Directors
How much more effective could you be with a whole team of guides to support your life purpose? There are people and beings who are there to assist you in your major life decisions, life transitions, work challenges or even daily quandries of where to put your energy and time. I’ve worked with such a Board the last few months and I’ve been amazed at how much more clear I’ve been able to see choices and how much easier opportunities and “coincidences” have happened. Your Spiritual Board is there to make those connections and synchronicities happen for you. They are there to guide and support you in fulfilling your life purpose, sharing your gifts with the world, so that you can fully live the wonderful glorious being you were meant to be.
These guides will help you stay in alignment with your larger life purpose. Find time each day to connect with their energy and their wisdom. Intentionally draw that closer to you. Align your consciousness with their life message and teaching. They are guides who can assist you in your waking, conscious state or in your dream time. Your job is to call upon them for guidance, support, inspiration and clarity.
Choosing Your Spiritual Board of Directors
Your Spiritual Board of Directors will be unique to you. They will be people, past and present, who have a perspective to share with you. By their life example, their actions and teaching, they guide you more clearly on how to use your gifts, in large and small ways, to fulfill your life purpose. Choose people you admire or from whom you wish to receive guidance. Read about them and what they’ve accomplished or how they lived their life. You may know them personally or simply be drawn to what you know about them from history books or contemporary writing.
Think of the sages, heroes and sheroes, whose wisdom speaks to you deeply. Some of you may already have gurus who support your life path. They will help you find more clear and direct ways to bring your talents, ideas, intuition, wisdom and energy to reach your goals and support the healing and transformation of the planet. Find ways to connect with them, learn from them, meditate on them.
Say Yes! to the numerous ways life is asking you to contribute your talents, ideas and energy.
Say Yes! to the opportunities and support being offered to you daily.
Say Yes! to showing up as the best you can offer the world, spiritually aligned with the Source of your being.
You are being called at this time to step more fully into Who You Are. Your Spiritual Board of Directors is there to assist you in doing that.
Linda is an author, speaker, coach, and consultant. Go to her website www.lindajferguson.com to read more about her work, view video clips of her talks, and find out more about her book “Path for Greatness: Spirituality at Work” available on Amazon and from her website. Also available on her website- selected chapters from her new book, “Staying Grounded in Shifting Sand”.
Have you ever made a hiring mistake — selecting the wrong person for the position?
Most of us, who are or have been supervisors, have had to deal with the consequences of a poor hire. It can eat up one’s time and energy and weaken an entire team. However, a good hire can take the weight of the world off your shoulders.
So why do so many managers fail to hire the right people for the right jobs? Here are the top five hiring mistakes supervisors make. Make sure you don’t.
1. Failure to prepare. When managers are so busy dealing with multiple issues everyday, they may not have the time to do the front-end homework that is required. Find the time because bad hiring decisions can be costly in terms of your time and your money.
2. Failure to identify success factors. You must go beyond the job description. Make a list of the qualities to be successful as a service champion, for example. It could be two or three or it could be 10. Then go out and find people to match those qualities.
3. Failure to evaluate correctly the person’s skills. If the position requires someone who is detail-oriented, then determine if the candidate has this skill either through the use of behavioral interviewing or through some form of assessment.
4. Failure to deal with a poor fit. Something changed. Maybe the job, the organization, or the person changed. Maybe everything changed. Many people end up in the wrong place because they stayed in the right place too long. So the right place can become the wrong place over a matter of time.
5. Failure to be patient. Sometimes the person is in the right place, but they have to grow into it — they have to be trained and developed. You know they have the talent they have the ability, they have the passion; but they need time and someone to help them.
Management Success Tip
Remember, good hires are never an accident. It is always the result of good preparation, good interviewing, and good decision making. So stop making hiring mistakes and start selecting the right people for the right jobs.
Look for our next post “Behaviorial Interviewing” – How to increase the odds for selecting the best person for the job.
Since being promoted into the new position as manager of operations, I have detected an aloofness from my team. I feel like an outsider.
Congratulations on your promotion. I know that there will be a lot of challenges associated with your new job. One of them are the feelings of unfriendliness you have detected from your old teammates. Put yourself in your co-workers shoes.
They are wondering: What kind of leader will you be? What changes are going to be made? What are your expectations? Are you going to be a tough or easy boss? Will you continue to go out with them or are you going to get uppity and forget about them? How are you going to deal with them when they make a mistake, come in late or get chewed out by a customer?
You and your teammates are dealing with a change, and there are a lot of elements that are unknown right now. These include things like how you should handle your new responsibilities, what effect these tasks will have on the team, and what expectations people should have about your leadership style.
How to manage former teammates:
Begin with a team meeting to acknowledge the change in the working relationship.
Be upfront with the issue of uncertainty. Provide as much information as you can.
Reinforce your team’s value to the organization. Help them realize their importance.
Capitalize on the knowledge you have of your team’s strengths when planning new initiatives.
Offer your support to the team. Investigate how much support–and what type of support–is needed.
Don’t over-commit in your new role by making unrealistic promises either to your staff or your boss.
Allow time to adjust. Your actions will go far in winning your team’s trust and respect and lessening feelings of leaving them behind in the long run.
Career Success Tip:
You are now managing people who you have worked with. This puts them and you in a situation of uncertainty. You want to maintain their friendships but now you’re their boss. You have the responsibility of managing, and even evaluating, their performance. Shoot for respect, not popularity. You can get both.
A key problem for many new nonprofits is that most of their founders, that “small number of caring people who want to help,” have the impression that fundraising has to do with “fundraisers” — special events or sales: dinners, circuses, golf tournaments, T-shirts, cookies or candy.
That couldn’t be farther from reality. While those activities seem to produce “quick” money, they don’t help you create a constituency that cares about your success and your long-term survival. Fundraisers and sales attract people looking to be entertained or who really like those thin-mint cookies.
Corporations and foundations are perceived as major sources of funding, so most people new to the non-profit community look to them for support. But, only 12% of funding for NPOs comes from those two sources, combined.
The truth is that corporations will usually provide substantial gifts only if they can benefit/profit by a relationship with your organization; and, most foundations will only support you for a limited time — they don’t want to adopt you, just help you get something started that can-and-will become self sustaining. And, self-sustaining means having ongoing, reliable sources of long-term funding.
Over 80% of funds raised by non-profit organizations come from individual donors or their estates – gifts solicited by various methods, often on a face-to-face basis by volunteers … including founders and other board members.
The traditional methods of ongoing fundraising include direct mail and/or telephone, often supported by email. The majority of funds (roughly 60-65% of all dollars) contributed to nonprofit organizations are in the form of major gifts from individuals.
Successful long-term fundraising, therefore, means creating a plan to identify, educate, cultivate and involve prospective (major) donors with your organization. It also means that, somewhere along the way, you’re going to have to ask them for the gift. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”
Non-profit organizations are important, often essential elements of a community, and they provide valuable, and often vital services to people in great need. Creating and operating an NPO must, therefore, be a serious undertaking – with strategic and development plans to ensure long-term survival. When needed, seek expertise and specialized knowledge — accountants, attorneys, consultants….
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Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? Email me at AskHank@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.
Southwest Airlines is no stranger to crisis management, just earlier this month coping with a messy communication situation after a flight was forced to make an emergency landing due to a a ruptured fuselage, so when a landing flight not only slid off of a runway in Chicago, but was photographed seemingly pointed directly at a nearby White Castle burger joint, the airline leapt into action.
Southwest Airlines’ crisis PR team is working overtime.
Today they are responding to media calls and posting on social media outlets about a flight that skidded off the runway at Chicago’s Midway Airport and into a patch of mud. No injuries were reported in the incident, but it worked its way into the top news story on websites and television.
The Chicago Tribune posted a video of the plane sitting at the end of runway, its nose pointing at a White Castle drive-thru restaurant across the street.
Almost immediately following today’s report, Southwest put out a statement confirming that the plane slid off the end of the runway and none of the passengers were injured. The airline pointed out that there were reports of heavy rain in the area at the time the aircraft landed.
Southwest’s statement on the incident was posted on its Facebook page shortly after it occurred, and it drew a whopping 128 “likes” and 170 comments. Most backed up the airlines and lay the blame on Midway and the weather.
Southwest not only addressed the situation on Facebook, but Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, Gowalla, FourSquare, and its company blog. Once again it’s been proven that simple, honest communication pays off, as Southwest’s approach resulted in the crisis quickly moving from story of the day to a non-incident overnight.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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In my organization it was decided we had depended on technology and already available computer training too long. The leadership and management had to admit that there were knowledge gaps in our workforce. People with valuable corporate knowledge were leaving or retiring who we couldn’t replace for budget reasons, but we still needed to get the job done.
So what do you do to maintain worker proficiency when resources are slim? The obvious answer is to use what you have in-house and constantly make people aware of the availability of those resources; however, making employees aware doesn’t necessarily motivate them to use those resources. What’s the fun in that? What’s in it for them?
There are some simple solutions to training that you may not even think of as training, but they are nonetheless. These everyday activities can be interesting and even fun. And, many you do right now or can implement with no cost at all. Well, maybe the cost of the donuts.
Use the company newsletter to write simple articles that motivate or pass on information we may have forgotten–little reminders that can be said in a humorous way will get our attention, hold our interest and remind us of something important. Ask for feedback on the articles; it generates new topics and let’s us know where training may be needed.
Daily tweets (we call them chirps) through email or even online can be a source of quick facts and figures, as well as best practices and simple procedures. Again, reminders of things we should be aware of takes the place of the refresher training we may need.
Staff meetings don’t have to be dull, add some donuts or bagels for the coffee, as well as a small dose of information from which everyone can benefit and make it the closing point of the meeting. Give a contact for more information, and the meeting’s done.
Have some gregarious person host “brown bag lunches” where someone shares information of interest (and necessity). It’s nice to use people who are also entertaining to do the presenting. Or, take this opportunity to use someone to talk about something not work-related that might be of interest. Mix it up. We need to stay interested in our team, which brings us closer together and motivated to work together.
Finally, while it’s not exactly “mentoring,” asking someone to back the leader up on a project will generate interest in project and motivate the employee to take some self-learning opportunities to get up to speed.
There you have five simple and low cost ways to add training to everyday activities. Every little bit helps. Keeping employees motivated to keep learning and growing is as important as the training itself. Without the proper motivation, the training is lost on them anyway.
Want to add to the list? Be my guest. Add a comment here or contact me directly through my website.
Managers, Trainers, Speakers, Presenters & Educators: Have an Affair to Remember! You know I’m talking about training, teaching, speaking or presenting occasions, right?
As stated in my previous two posts, training sessions can be a dreaded activity by many. Despite research that tells us lecture is not learning, it is still the most used delivery method. And with current updates in technology the lecture is often supported with a deck of PowerPoint slides filled with the words being spoken by the presenter often times while reading directly from the screen or his printed copy. It is not surprising that this is the most common method. It is the easiest to develop and control and it is what learners often expect. This may just be why they dread coming to training.
What to Do?
Developing and delivering training sessions that will be pleasant surprises for the participants instead of dreaded events requires a learner-centered approach which is much different than a controlled lecture. I recommended some resources in my previous posts. In addition to those websites, there are a number of books that are also great resources. Sharon Bowman’s The Ten-Minute Trainer 150 Ways to Teach it Quick & Make it Stick is one of my favorites. Dave Meier’s The Accelerated Learning Handbook is another great resource to help you re-design your training. The ideas shared in these resources can be used with any topic, delivered to any group, and within any time frame. They can also be used in e-learning and web-based delivery methods.
Basic Premise
The resources listed focus the development of training on a four phase cycle. The four phases of the cycle include planned activities with a specific purpose of engaging the learner in the experience using multiple senses to explore the new material and connect with others in the learning community. The phases are designed based on what brain research tells us about learning. (See my previous post for more on this). The design methodology using these phases brings the theory into practice with great results.
What to Learn More?
In the next few weeks I will break down each phase with tips and tricks to use in each. I would also welcome you to share your experiences in training in the comments section. What experience can you describe that have been pleasant surprises or training nightmares?
Sheri Mazurek is a training and human resource professional with over 16 years of management experience, and is skilled in all areas of employee management and human resource functions, with a specialty in learning and development. She is available to help you with your Human Resources and Training needs on a contract basis. For more information send an email to smazurek0615@gmail.com or visit www.sherimazurek.com. Follow me on twitter @Sherimaz.
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