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…
This week’s episode of Celebrity Apprentice offered a lesson for project managers the world over about recognizing the power of mixing up stagnant teams.
The guys had been doing pretty well as a team and had learned to play to each other’s strengths after the first six episodes. The women, not so much. Cyndi’s initial flakiness has progressed to outright boorishness. Holly continues to grate with her sledgehammer finesse. Maria takes things too personally and Summer is the classic peacekeeper. Sharon has been absent for the last few shows (tolerated because she is The Donald’s pet this season) so her brusqueness has been in short supply but still evident enough to ruffle a few feathers. › Continue reading…
Is winning at all cost, despite the consequences of team trust and relationships worth the price? That is the question we contemplate after this week’s episode of celebrity apprentice. This week the teams were each assigned a rising country music artist, and the task was to perform an image makeover, including a press kit and media coaching to prepare the artist for an interview with “PEOPLE Country Magazine” and a live concert. › 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…
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…
If you are like most people charged with running a meeting, you find the same group dynamics are in play meeting after meeting after meeting. You have someone who won’t talk and another who won’t stop talking and everyone else falls somewhere in the middle.
Dr. Paul Paulus at the University of Texas at Arlington has studied and written about group task performance and creativity. He has determined that groups are less productive than individuals, if left to their own devices. › Continue reading…
My New Year’s Resolution is to focus on creativity this year. Even though today is only December 31, there is no time like the present! So, let’s get started.
For the next few weeks, I will be blogging about how we, as project managers, can help our project teams think more creatively. In my last blog, I looked at the systems and causes of teams that are in a creativity crisis. Today, I offer the first technique for helping your team break out of a creativity rut. I will follow with many more techniques over the next several weeks. › Continue reading…