48 results for communication

  • Excuse Me, Your Pants Are on Fire:
    5 Tips on Dealing with Liars

    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 telling you and others on […]

  • My Most Important Stakeholder

    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.

  • Papercut in the Blogosphere

    I want to give a big thanks to two people who have written about Papercut in the last 24 hours. Jo-Ann Sweeney, of Commsabilities, has included me among some very distinguished project management luminaries in her article, Active listening – the no.1 skill for project managers. She has interviewed many seasoned professionals around the world for this article, and I'm very proud to be quoted among some of the distinguished project management luminaries pictured and linked in the sidebar to the right.

  • Nine Destructive Project Manager Behaviours: Part 8 of 9

    The project manager needs to be able to look into the future. It's an incredibly valuable skill to look beyond a seemingly small, inconsequential decision, through the chain reaction of events that decision will trigger, to the results. But the project manager can't stop there. Whatever the PM sees, it's imperative he or she be able to effectively communicate that vision to the project team. If they can't or don't, there will be nothing to stem the tide of events, and the consequences will come to pass. It's unfortunate, but only the person with sight is in a position to take action.

  • Nine Destructive Project Manager Behaviours: Part 6 of 9

    The poor Terrier really means well. Always searching, they are full of purpose. And when they recognize a problem, they will latch on to it tooth and nail, dissecting it and re-dissecting it until you wouldn't think there was another way you could possibly look at it. The trouble with Terriers is, they have a lot of trouble letting go. Even bigger trouble for Terriers is, while they're fixated, they can't see anything else that's going on.

  • Nine Destructive Project Manager Behaviours: Part 5 of 9

    Premature Solutioners make others crazy. It's not just the clients who suffer. Everyone on the project team who has done any work on a solution that is inappropriate has to claw everything back and try to build a new solution based on whatever Frankenstein parts are left. The work has already been paid for, and now must be paid again. It doesn't matter what type of contract exists... somebody, somewhere is paying for the rework.

  • Nine Destructive Project Manager Behaviours: Part 3 of 9

    This is the third instalment of my series on destructive project manager behaviours. So far, we've talked about abdicating responsibility (the Sack), and failing to maintain momentum (the Magpie). Both of these behaviours hurt the projects the project manager is meant to control. Sacks, under the guise of "delegation", give away the one thing they can control, and leave it up to others to carry them. Magpies, using "multitasking" as an excuse, tend to abandon work that that needs their attention when they see something shiny.

  • Nine Destructive Project Manager Behaviours: Part 2 of 9

    Welcome to part two of my series on destructive project manager behaviours. Last time we looked at abdication of responsibility. I called a manager who demonstrated this "The Sack", because they let themselves be carried along by others on their project. I rated the behaviour as "Dangerous": a Sack basically cuts the head off his or her project, but because others invariably come to the rescue, collateral damage of this behaviour is lessened.