I remember my first position as a manager, selling clothes in a department store to work my way through college. One of my colleagues, who I’ll call Jay, was also a good friend. We ran together, went to movies, and overall had a great time. After I got promoted and became his boss, we still did some things together—but there was persistent tension in our relationship. He didn’t like the fact that I was his boss and would tell me that he worked for my boss, not me. He then became chummy with another guy who was his peer in another department. This tension existed until I graduated from college and left the department store. Once I wasn’t his boss, the tension lifted. That was my first experience with the “them” team. Read more at ProjectManagement.com.
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My name is Lonnie, and I'm a victim of identity theft.
So check this out. A buddy of mine wrote a Facebook post about how someone stole his daughter's Social Security number and filed for unemployment benefits with Washington State's Employment Security Division (ESD). Having never occurred to me, I decided to go to ESD and attempt to file an unemployment claim. After I entered the information I received the following message: The Social Security number (SSN) you entered already exists and is linked to this partly hidden email address: *****@fasternet.co About a year ago, I wrote an article called Becoming a Sustainable Project Manager with an accompanying Sustainable PM Assessment. My hope at the time was that readers would understand the four sustainability drivers: 1. Skills 2. Lifestyle 3. Relationships 4. Stewardship …and develop action plans on how to be more sustainable. To help underscore the importance of being sustainable, here are four stories where, for each person, sustainability wasn’t a priority. Read more at ProjectManagement.com.
I am a huge fan of 360-feedback evaluations, a tool in which a participant and their leader, peers and followers evaluate them using a series of structured questions. With the 360 evaluations I’ve gone through, the results were presented to me in terms of how I view myself versus how my leader, peers and followers viewed me. My first 360 was part of a five-day leadership offsite where survey participants completed the survey prior to the offsite and the results were given to us at the end of the third day. Prior to handing out the evaluation results, I can remember the offsite facilitator saying, “You’re probably going to see some things that will hurt. Take some time to go through the feedback tonight in your hotel room, then let’s talk tomorrow about what you’ll do with it.” We got the packets with our individual evaluation results. I remember being excited to see the results, expecting to be reaffirmed by how others viewed me as a leader. Then I opened the packet. Read more at ProjectManagement.com. One Monday morning, Kyle showed up for a status meeting with his project team. Eva, a team member and close friend, noticed a pattern: Kyle looked perpetually exhausted. Concerned, she approached him, “Kyle, are you okay?” “Yeah, just a hectic weekend with kids’ activities and prepping for the exec meeting this week.” “I certainly understand,” Eva said. “Are you taking time to rest up? I know how demanding your life is right now.” “I’ve got great work/life balance. It’s just very busy with everything going on,” Kyle said. “Kyle, you remind me of my father. Always running at 100 miles an hour, thinking that ‘work/life balance’ by default meant rest. That was until he had a heart attack, caused by all the stress of trying to keep up. Rather than deciding to get some rest, the decision was made for him. Work/life balance doesn’t guarantee rest.” Kyle paused for a moment, reflecting on Eva’s advice. “I hear you.” “Be careful, I’m concerned about you.” Eva smiled at Kyle and walked back to her desk. Read more at ProjectManagement.com I remember as a kid being entertained by plate spinners. The performer would spin bowls, plates or other flat objects on poles and keep them all spinning without falling off. I watched each plate spinner run from pole to pole, jiggling the pole to keep a plate from wobbling and falling off. The spinner had to prioritize those plates most likely to fall off the pole first, get them spinning again, them move on to the next teetering plate. Sometimes, the spinner was able to keep everything spinning; sometimes, a plate crashed to the ground, to the “oohs” and “aahs” of the crowd. Welcome to the world of managing multiple projects. As a young PM, I was managing three large engagements. I was bound and determined to show everyone I could do it. Long story short, I ended up tanking not one, not two, but all three projects. All three plates came crashing down. It was one of the most painful experiences I ever went through as a PM…one that I was determined not to repeat. I’ve been asked how many projects is reasonable for a PM to manage. Honestly, it depends on several key factors: Read more at ProjectManagement.com.
Some time back I was talking with a fellow project manager about a difficult issue he was having with his new boss. The thumbnail summary of the discussion was that the project manager was feeling overly scrutinized and micro-managed. Now I knew the project manager to be a capable professional who could confidently handle the work assigned to him. Yet his boss insisted on managing every detailed aspect of his work. More so, his boss was very critical of the work being done even though it was performed to professionally acceptable standard. The situation became unbearable for the project manager; he ultimately left the organization.
Recently I was having a discussion with a colleague. During the chat he made a comment that really resonated with me: “I love my career—not just because of what I do, but also what it enables me to do.” That one sentence seemed so simple, but so impactful. He was saying that his career was fulfilling, provided financially, and afforded him the flexibility to do non-work things that were really important to him. It was about both a great career and the benefits his career brought to the other aspects of his life. As I ruminated over the concept, it occurred to me that it might be helpful to put a bit of definition around the “enabling me to do” phrase. I’ve written in the past about finding contentment in nine different life areas and thought that to be a reasonable starting point, as follows: Read more at ProjectManagement.com |
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April 2024
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