The project management community and the wider business community are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of soft skills. However, being aware of their importance and investing in developing improved capabilities are different. Before most organisations (and individuals) will invest in developing improved soft-skill capabilities, their value needs to be demonstrated. A recent report prepared […]
Valuing Soft Skills Read More »
All businesses will go through some form of crisis at least once in their lifetime. How the business comes through this is very much to do with the management style of those in charge. A great manager will be able to inspire a team through any difficulties and enable them to come through the other
Leading your team through a period of crisis – the mark of a good manager? Read More »
A Level 5 Leader (L5L) is an individual who blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will. The characteristics and success of these leaders were first identified by Jim Collins in 2001 and formed a central plank in his best selling book, ‘From Good to Great’. The Level 5 discovery derived from a research project
Level 5 Leadership Read More »
Whilst frequently treated as separate topics, conflict management, problem solving and decision making are interrelated and all are focused on achieving the best possible outcome. In an ideal world there would always be sufficient information and rational maturity to treat everything as a problem and apply the following steps to reach the optimum solution: Investigate
Problems, conflicts and decisions Read More »
The PMBOK® Guide and most modern management texts emphasise the importance of leadership and motivation over directive control. This is for a very good reason, as modern management evolved during the Industrial Revolution, the function of most workers was to ‘man the equipment’ to literally keep the wheels of industry turning. In the 21st century,
Eliminating the fear factor Read More »
Most issues and points of difference and even bad events are resolved without conflict. Negotiation, discussion and helpful 3rd party input resolve the issue. Even when the issue is stressful and damaging (eg someone runs into your car…) most of the time people deal with the situation without descending into acrimony. But at other times
Why are they (you) fighting? Read More »
This question was recently asked in a LinkedIn forum. It went on to say that Maslow was ‘disproven in the 1950s’ so we should not continue to teach it. In case you didn’t know. Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ is a theory of motivation published by Abraham Maslow in 1943. It was never based on any
Why do we still teach Maslow? Read More »
Leading a project is rather like hosting a party. The host helps to bring people together, makes sure they have what they need and know what’s expected of them, and then encourage them along the way (without doing all the work). We all know about hosting in some way already, but have you tried applying
The six roles of Host Leadership Read More »
One of the more interesting communication backfires of the last few weeks has been the widespread reaction to the Australian government’s chief business adviser, Maurice Newman’s ‘opinion piece’ in the The Australian newspaper: ‘We’re ill-prepared if the iceman cometh’. The construct of the article uses two rhetorical ploys that can be effective if applied subtly
Rhetoric can backfire Read More »
Project Management has it’s roots in a few key sectors, defence, IT, construction, and capital intensive industries such as energy and oil and gas. If you look at the awards issued by the APM over the past few years then most of the award winners are from these key sectors. However as project management matures
Project Management Around the World #pmFlashBlog: The Need for a Fresh Approach. Read More »
