Today's Instant Advice

Yesterday a senior exec. told me that the predominant cognitive style for his organization was ISTJ. (If those letters mean nothing to you, check out this quick explanation of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator)

It reminded me of this text file I’ve had floating around my PC for years. Instant advice for particular cognitive styles. I think that you’ll find this interesting if you know your predominant cognitive style, or that of your organization…

Change Management Isn't a Methodology!

A few years ago I worked on a project with a client (global, ~140,000 people) that had an in-house change management methodology.  I expected that this would make the job easier – after all, they must recognise the value of change management and know how to use it, surely. 

I was astounded to discover that very few people in the company knew how to apply the methodology – I found nobody who even knew where to start!  After hours of studying the methodology I figured out why:  There was no starting point. I was just a cluster of loosely connected tools.

Dealing with the Doomed Project

Yesterday I was asked this question by a member of the Project Leadership Network – it’s such a good question I wanted to share it with everyone:

“When you work for a software consultancy SOMETIMES there isn't much choice over which project you take-up. Sometime we get so-called 'doomed' projects wherein the customer has tried his level best and when the deadline was right in his face, decided to cry for help to a software vendor. In such situations, what are the things we need to do to safeguard against failure of the Project?”

Here are my thoughts – I’m sure that there are many other prespectives too, so please feel free to comment:

6 ways to stop project management from killing creativity

Have you ever made the head of a programme manager spin around? I recently told a client that his team didn’t need anymore ‘creativity training’, and that what was holding them back was too much project management...Woah!

Aghast, (well I had just killed a sacred cow in his office)… he wanted to know more. Could the way he was brandishing PMBOK and PRINCE2 across his programme really be preventing his team from performing at their creative best?

Calming him down, I told him that his beloved methodologies were of course important in making sure this large and complex programme was well co-ordinated, managed, and monitored... but there were 6 changes he would have to make if he wanted the team to be creative as well!