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…
Sunday, March 14th marks the premier of the third season of Celebrity Apprentice on NBC at 8:00 PM CST. The only show on television, scripted or unscripted, about the discipline of project management, it is fascinating for those of us who toil in the trenches of the triple constraint. The celebrity quotient just makes it that much more addictive.
Because the show offers so many real-life lessons for project managers (despite the fact that the tasks are being carried out by decidedly surreal celebrity PMs), Cindy and I have decided to analyze each episode in our blog for the next several weeks. We will also be Twittering during the show each Sunday night. Join us on Twitter by searching for #celebrityPM if you’d like to chat with us about the drama as it unfolds! Then, each Wednesday, we’ll post a recap of the episode and blog about the lessons we can learn from the show. › 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…
Communicating about tasks, roles and responsibilities takes up a great deal of time for most project managers. After communicating, a project manager documents and tracks task assignments in a project plan. So everybody has something to do, and the plan forward is clear to all. But how do you translate those task assignments into a real sense of ownership by individual team members? How do you make sure that each member of the project team feels accountable for the project’s success, not just the project manager? › Continue reading…
In my last blog, I talked about the difference between Positions (WHAT I want) and Interests (WHY I want what I want). Understanding the difference is critical for successful negotiations. Negotiators who bargain over interests, which are based on needs, fears, desires and concerns, are more successful than those than bargain over positions. There are often many different ways to satisfy an interest, while attempting to satisfy positions usually does not offer such flexibility. › Continue reading…
Do you understand the difference between consensus and compromise? The words sound alike but the distinction is important.
I recently attended a conflict resolution class lead by Judy Mares-Dixon, a well known mediator and designer of dispute resolution systems for organizations around the world. Our class spent a lot of time discussing compromise versus consensus. › Continue reading…