It’s the end of the 2nd Quarter and the first half of the year, and for many organizations, it’s a time when projects and programs are reviewed and analyzed. Some will ultimately be nurtured: more money, resources, attention, whatever the scare resource is. Other projects and programs will not fare so well and will be terminated outright or “back-burnered” to death. › Continue reading…
Archive for 'Communications'
Tags: change management, Communications, group dynamics, lessons learned sessions, project closure, project manager skills, project team meetings, teambuilding
Well, the season has wrapped up, and for project managers, there were plenty of lessons to learn. We saw failures in communication, planning, execution and risk management. We saw poor ideas that were well-executed and good ideas that suffered in implementation. We saw coalitions form and break apart.
Ultimately, it came down to Holly Robinson Peete and Bret Michaels, neither whom I would have predicted would be a finalist. › Continue reading…
Well, it finally happened. Cyndi Lauper was finally fired. She has been a terrible disappointment all season, and it finally caught up with her.
Cyndi served as project manager twice, losing once and winning once. In Episode 1, she led the women’s team, Tenacity, in their first loss in the diner challenge. I had expected her to be a really strong contender, and was very surprised by her miserable performance in that task. During that episode, she demonstrated that she was not able to manage the work of other people and I blogged about how she never really “got” the point of the challenge, which was to raise money for charity. She instead focused on running a diner, and did that badly as well. The men’s team, Rocksolid, focused on raising money and trounced the ladies. › Continue reading…
In this week’s episode of Celebrity Apprentice, the losing team fell into a common trap that often plagues presenters everywhere – TMI: too much information. This week was a tough one for the board room, as even Donald said he felt that both teams produced an excellent product and performed well. No one team member or project manager made any particular blunders. As usual, with the typical TV show diversion tactics, the audience was led to believe that one team – Rock Solid – was on a path to defeat, due to Bret’s blatant disregard for the sponsors request for levity, › Continue reading…
After five episodes, the stress of the show is taking its toll on both teams. The ladies are not nearly as courteous as they were when they started, and are eager to comply when The Donald sets them up to throw each other under the bus in the Board Room. The guy’s team, no longer forming or storming, has moved on to norming, the stage where team members adjust their behaviors to the team dynamics. In this week’s episode, Curtis provided strong leadership for Rocksolid. After weeks of watching Bret dither, Curtis managed him well and led the men’s team to their first win after a string of losses to Tenacity. › Continue reading…
In week 4 of The Celebrity Apprentice, there were a couple of dominant themes. More important even than in past weeks, communication emerged early in the task as a vital discipline that set the stage as a differentiator. Also, I think we saw a poor execution of delegation which contributed to the downfall of the losing team.
As this week’s task assignment began, Donald called both teams to the boardroom, and asked each team to select a project manager without disclosing what the task was. › Continue reading…
This week’s Celebrity Apprentice was an object lesson for just how badly people can handle conflict. Women are particularly guilty of avoiding conflict so they won’t have to hurt anyone’s feelings.
Cyndi Lauper has consistently been a distraction to her team in the first three episodes of Celebrity Apprentice. Several of her team members on Tenacity, the women’s team, have whined about her in their camera confessionals. › Continue reading…
Multi-Voting is a useful technique for helping your team rank or prioritize a list of options. It is particularly useful if the first choice or top priority is clear, but you can’t get your group to agree on the 2nd and subsequent priorities.
The basic premise is quite simple: each participant gets to cast multiple votes on a list of options. If the list is static, one not generated by the group, this can even be done before a brainstorming meeting. › Continue reading…
Attribution Analysis is a great method to use when you need to guide your team through the exercise of generating ideas. In the process, you may challenge some of the assumptions you’ve made about the nature of the problem you are trying to tackle and the realm of possible options you have for solving it. › Continue reading…
Techniques for Creative Team Thinking: Affinity Diagrams, Brain Writing and the Plus/Delta Technique
In my last blog, I talked about the Nominal Group Technique, a quick and painless way to guide your team through a brainstorming task. Each team member gets a stack of Post It notes (or index cards or scraps of paper or whatever is available) and 5 or 10 minutes to silently and anonymously write down as many ideas as they can think of, with one idea per note card. When the time is up, the meeting facilitator (i.e., the Project Manager – you) collects the artifacts, reads them all aloud, and, once all the ideas have been heard, asks the group to begin discussing them.
There are many benefits to this exercise:
- Participants have time to organize their thoughts and are not influenced by ideas from others
- Participants are less emotional when writing down their ideas
- Less assertive team members are heard equally with more dominant members
- Ideas are de-personalized because they are submitted anonymously
Today I will give you some additional methods to use with the Nominal Group Technique (NGT), to maximize the many benefits of using this simple tool. › Continue reading…