So what does a project manager have in common with a terrorist negotiator? Well, if they’re both doing their jobs right, they’re driving specific behaviours from the people with whom they’re working. That’s right, a hostage negotiator’s job is to get a terrorist to act in a way that the negotiator wants them to. Do [...]
Read more and share your opinion →So as I’m diving into research for this workshop on developing empathy in project managers, I’m overwhelmed by Google search results that show me exactly how much stigma and misinformation there is out there on the concept. Informed solely by the various websites out there, empathy is something best taught to children, hippies, [...]
Read more and share your opinion →I received a mail the other day from a reader who had a project “fail” and was concerned how that affected his reputation. I thought it was a great question, so I’m going to share my thoughts here.
First of all, I believe “failed” is a very subjective term. If you’re going to talk about [...]
Read more and share your opinion →In a much earlier post, I mentioned I’d had the unique opportunity to work on outsourcing projects both from the buy side, and from the sell side. Today I want to talk a bit about that, and explain why I feel outsourcing is just an awful idea, and hurts [...]
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I recently came across this RSA talk by political activist Barbara Ehrenreich, in which she talks about the culture of forced optimism we seem to possess.
From a project management perspective, I think this is extraordinarily apropos. How many times have [...]
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Okay, I’m going to preface this article by saying that some ladies and gentlemen may not wish to read further. The example I’m about to use to demonstrate my point surrounds a topic many polite people don’t like to discuss.
That being said, I was on my local drug store’s website this weekend to see [...]
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So you’ve kicked off your project, and things are well underway. You followed all the best practices; you did everything you learned in the project management manuals. Everyone knows their roles, responsibilities, and how they’re expected to interact with one another. There’s just one small problem.
Someone on your project team has a habit of [...]
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I’d like you to meet my most important stakeholder. His name is Harold. Okay, mainly this is just an opportunity to show off how awesome he is, but there’s a point in here, I promise. Earlier this week, I had the unfathomable joy of eating a poppy seed bagel, biting down, and having a single, tiny poppy seed shatter a rear molar. To say I was in, um, excruciating agony would be an understatement, especially as the shards of the tooth still remaining were shredding the inside of my mouth like a Japanese shuriken. It was kind of awful.
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I'm Geoff Crane. After 22 years in the trenches of a lot of tough projects, I decided to change direction a little bit and focus on sparking ideas in the vibrant field of project management.
If you're a project manager, or even if you're one voice in the project choir, you are in a position to be truly remarkable. Without exaggerating, you have within you the capacity to change the world, just because of who and where you are!
How do you access that part of yourself? Please get my free project leadership advice and free ebook "Nine Destructive Behaviours" and join my rapidly growing community!
