With the vacation season in the rear-view mirror, many of us are going to get back to the grind of working too much, not getting enough sleep, eating poorly and not getting enough exercise.   The concept of work life balance to most is just a bunch of theoretical baloney espoused by a bunch of talking-head motivational speakers and organizational leaders.  There’s simply no way out of the imbalance, right?

BZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTT.  Wrong.

In my blog post In-Person Jekyll, Social Media Hyde, I discuss some takeaways to consider when posting to social media. I wrote it in 2021, spurred on by an onslaught of surprisingly divisive social media posts from people who, when face to face, appeared nothing like how their posts represented them.

I am connected with many business colleagues on social media, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and X. Many are relatively reserved in their commentary and use business platforms for business topics, and personal platforms for things like vacation pics and family updates.

I really enjoy seeing both sides of colleagues, as it helps me get a more rounded view of them and discover their interests. For example, one of my colleagues is well-established in the tech industry, but also a lead singer for a cover band. It’s really fun to see him live his Sammy Hagar alter ego on the weekends. (Sammy Hagar over David Lee Roth any day!) Whenever I see one of his posts, I know I’ll be lightheartedly entertained and can celebrate his fun side.

My focus, though, is not on those like my lead-singer buddy.

It’s on the finger-wagger.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

Glenn, a junior project manager, worked on a mission-critical 18-month program led by Sara, the senior PM. Glenn was very ambitious, worked long hours, and constantly strived to take on more and more work.

About six months into the program, Glenn was feeling exhausted. He became less focused and easily distracted. He always looked tired. He put on weight. His team recognized the change in him and began to lose faith in his ability to execute.

Glenn had always been a proud PM who had never seen the need to get counsel from others on how hard he worked. But as he observed how Sara seemed so focused and intentional in her work, he decided to ask her about it in their next 1:1.

“Sara, I’m barely able to keep up and am exhausted. My team can see it in me, my wife and kids see it. You seem to have it all together. How are you doing it?”

Sara smiled. “Ah, sometimes I put on a good face. There are many nights where I’m driving home yelling at myself in the car. I’ll bet other drivers get a real charge out of seeing me so animated.”

Glenn grinned at her humble response. “I’ll bet you have those moments, but we only see the focused Sara.”

Sara turned more serious. “Glenn, there is something I learned a long time ago that I needed to focus on. I was a lot like you--very ambitious, burning the midnight oil, always wanting more. A senior PM I was working for saw me at the end of my rope and gave me some great advice which I’m going to give you. She said that if I was going to scale, I couldn’t rely on brute force to get things done; I had to build my stamina muscle.”

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

I had a discussion with a young man who, three years after graduating college, still did not have a job. I asked him what he wanted to do for his career. “I want to be a Renaissance Man,” he said.

Now, aside from the fact that it’s been a while since I’ve heard someone refer to themselves as a Renaissance Man, I envisioned someone much older and wiser, not a twenty-something young man. So I did some digging on the definition of “Renaissance Man/Woman” and stumbled across a word I’d never heard before:

Polymath.

Dictionary.com defines Polymath as a person of great learning in several fields of study. The word originates from the Greek polymathḗs, which translates to “having learned much.”

This got me thinking about how I, as a PM and leader, strive to be a person of great learning in several fields of study. The interesting word here is learning. It’s not about being a final authority, knowing all there is to know. Instead, it’s about being a student who develops expertise but continues to learn about both existing and new fields of study.

For the project management discipline, I call that person the Polymath PM.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

Ahh, social media. Where from the comfort of your living room you can make your point known to millions of people. People and businesses have grown from being virtual unknowns to worldwide phenoms (think “Gangnam Style”) thanks to social media. Then there are those who fell from grace like a lead balloon (think Roseanne Barr, Anthony Weiner, or Paula Deen) because of social media. Both the rises and falls can happen swiftly and without advance warning. Sadly, it doesn’t even have to be true. Fake news travels just as fast as the truth. It just has to be tantalizing. It also doesn’t even have to go viral; a handful of viewers can see something that will alter their opinions of the person posting.

That viewer could be your current or future boss, customer, or business partner.

Throughout my career, I’ve facilitated and been a party to disagreements or conflict more times that I can possibly count. Sometimes things worked out okay, and those affected were satisfied with the outcome.

Other times, things didn’t turn out as well. As I’ve thought about both the good and not-so-good outcomes, it caused me to dig deeper to find the underlying factors that helped drive the outcomes.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

Jane was a group manager over a team of six buyers for a large department store chain.  Her team specialized in buying house-wares, including linens, sheets, towels and small appliances.  Her team met every week to discuss advertised specials for upcoming weeks and any supplier issues that the team needed to be aware of.  There was one linens supplier, Patty’s Linens, that has had some difficulty with product quality and the department store was experiencing higher-than-normal returns on the product.  Two weeks earlier, the supplier submitted a plan for how they were going to improve the quality of their product.  The department store decided to keep the supplier on for three more months to evaluate their plan and give the supplier an opportunity to resolve the quality issues.  With this as backdrop, we eavesdrop on Jane’s current team meeting: