Excerpted from The Truth about Getting Your Point Across…and Nothing But the Truth

Unless you excused yourself for whatever reason you were there for at least fifteen minutes listening to his philosophy.  The problem was that Moe was friends with the person managing our contract so we had to put up with him. 

Recently, my wife and I were on a social visit with a friend I’ll call Vick. We were enjoying beverages and light chatter when suddenly the topic changed to world events. It was like a light switch turned on, with Vick becoming very animated about the topic, spewing data point after data point, and aggressively quizzing me on whether I had heard about some of the points he was raising.

When I replied “no,” his response was incredulous. “You mean you haven’t heard of _____?” he asked, as if I were the only person on Earth who didn’t know what he was talking about. This went on for about an hour before we resumed talking about lighter topics.

I thought about the interaction that evening, and the next day texted him a follow-up question. The onslaught resumed, and after a while I decided to disengage because I saw that no good would come of the exchange.

I later thought about both the face-to-face and the text interactions, and came up with some important elements that were there—and some that were missing:

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As leaders we have a responsibility to ensure that our area is managed effectively and that we are driving the organization to achieve its stated objectives. We also have a responsibility to grow the next generation of leaders to ensure that the great work we've done continues on after we've moved on.　 Keep some of these nuggets in mind as you ponder making the next generation of leaders great:　

Early in my career as a leader, I adopted the popular phrase, “My door is always open.” These magic words were intended to be a sign of support that, as a leader, I would be available for my team. It just felt so good to say that—to know that if a team member wanted to come in to talk about something important or just shoot the breeze, I would be there for them whenever they wanted.

Then reality struck.

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While searching for a job online, Manesh found a listing that caught his eye. “Wow, this looks perfect!” he thought as he read through the position requirements. Then those three dreaded words reared their ugly head:

“Leadership experience required.”

“Dang,” Manesh thought as he closed his laptop. “This is so frustrating. How do I get experience when everyone is expecting me to already have the experience?”

You’ve likely experienced this earlier in your career, or may be going through it now: Potential employers want leadership experience that you don’t have, and you don’t have a clear path on how to get that experience.

When looking to grow leadership skills, this can be a frustrating dilemma. How do you get the experience you need and build great leadership skills when your paths are limited? Here's a potential path...

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As project managers, we’ve likely been faced with getting a one-line explanation of what a sponsor needs—along with a deadline. Depending on the organization, there could be a range of responses—from doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation, getting people in a room to estimate the work, or using a comparative initiative to assess feasibility.

Now, I’m not here to criticize your organization’s approach, but I have found that having something that enables the PM to rough-cut an initiative using some standards can be helpful in providing a lens on whether a date is even remotely achievable. This is where the work-back timebox model comes in.

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Some time back my son and I participated in a service project to help a young family clean out a back yard.  At one time the yard was a wonderful oasis with a swimming pool, lush garden, and beautiful walkways.  The once beautiful oasis was neglected over time and became an overgrown jungle of northwest foliage with its prime resident being thorny blackberry bushes.  The blackberry bushes were six feet tall and covered most of the yard.  What a prickly mess!

Dean, a project manager, was conducting a project post-mortem with Tania, his VP.
“Why the month slip, Dean?” Tania asked.
“Well,” Dean started, “we didn’t get on the vendor’s calendar early enough for integration testing. They couldn’t schedule us in when they needed us, so we had to slip.”
Tania shook her head. “Hold on, Dean. The vendor is Conset, right?”
“That’s right.”
“If I remember correctly, we did a project with them last year and the same thing happened; we didn’t get on their calendar early enough and it caused a slip. Were you aware of that?”
“I wasn’t.”
“I specifically asked the project team to include that in the lessons learned. If I recall, Tarun was the PM. Did you talk with Tarun or look at his lessons learned?”
Dean looked down. “Um, no.”
Tania kept her gaze. “Honestly, what good are lessons learned if we don’t bother to use them? This was clearly avoidable.”
“I’ll make sure to document this for the next time, Tania,” Dean said.
“Do you look at lessons learned from other projects?” Tania asked.
“Well, not really, they’re all over the place and in different formats. It’s kind of like finding a needle in a haystack.”
“Unbelievable. We’re willing to make the same mistake over and over and not bother to learn from past mistakes. What a waste.”

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