Actionmint

When you already feel super time crunched… It can feel really overwhelming to think about meeting new people. How can you expand your network when you can barely keep up with the people you know?

I completely understand that you have a certain relational capacity and that over investing in meeting new people is not a good use of time. However, through recent conversations with new additions to my network, I’ve been reminded of...
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One of the challenges that Project Managers encounter as they work through the project in front of them is to find the time to step away from the Gantt charts and the email for a while and actually go and talk to a few people.

The temptation to stay shuttered away in one’s office is huge – after all there is always so much to get done, and having a smartphone means never having to say you’re unavailable. This leads to a profound change in the physiology of any busy person (not just Project Managers), in which their minds stay in a state of siege, prepared mostly for reaction and seldom for interaction.
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Over the last 2 months we have seen a lot of coverage of the rollout of the healthcare.gov rollout. A lot of the coverage may have taken a slant towards one political side or the other, but as Project Managers, we can take a few really valuable lessons from the rollout of the healthcare.gov website and how you can learn from their actions to make your next projects better.
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For the past couple years, I’ve been leading workshops and teaching Berklee Online courses about project management, aimed mostly at those working in the music industry. A trend I’m finding among my students is that many of them arrive at my doorstep feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of their work. They have so many concerts, recordings, teaching responsibilities, gigs, and other endeavors in their lives that they feel it is all out of control.
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With the season finale of “Breaking Bad” having aired, I’ve been doing a bit of thinking around the show premise, and how similar the plot line is to the development of a startup.

The same problems that happen to Walt Enterprises in the show happen to all founders when trying to build a company. Product. Team. Partners. Price. Distribution. Investors. You name it, they’ve faced it.
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We human beings are often very good at taking on tasks with energy and commitment, especially once there is a plan and a great leader in place. Unfortunately, though, we are also plagued by optimism, and although this may generally seen as an admirable trait, it can cause havoc within a project.

Optimism tends to make people envision time-lines, budgets and end results the way they hope things will turn out, which seldom ever happens...
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Everyone is talking about the enormous benefits to be had through collaborative working and better employee engagement. Industry analysts (McKinsey) report a 25% improvement in organizational efficiency when companies successfully deploy a collaboration platform. Whether it’s social media or social collaboration, organizations are striving to deliver better value through a more connected workforce and closer engagement with customers and stakeholders.
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Project status reporting takes up lots of a project manager’s time, and it can be difficult to know who should get what information. After all, you really don’t want to be producing lots of different, tailored project reports for every stakeholder. If you do, you risk people saying that they are hearing different stories and that someone else has been told something else – and that they aren’t getting the full picture.

As a result, it can be tempting to produce one really detailed project report and send it to everyone, but that’s a sure-fire way of ensuring your project report never gets read at all. Here are some tips for who needs to know what and how...
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As companies have started to grow again yet profitable growth remains a tall order, it is all the more critical that companies deliver the expected project results - on time, on/under budget and meeting/exceeding the intended results. Therefore, it is critical that we throw out the old paradigms, starting with the need for complex project timelines. I hear my project management colleagues thinking, "heresy!"
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