Leading You Me We 39 Project Management Culture

Prévia do material em texto

Session 39
Project Management & 
Culture
• Project Management is part science, and part art.
• Project Management is about achieving a desired outcome through a series of tasks, 
some in sequence, some in parallel. So you have to coordinate different things.
• Divide the project into stages, put it on a calendar, figure out what needs to get done 
before what, then make sure each piece gets done on schedule
• "Resourcing": You have to allocate resources to your project: money, people, etc. You 
frequently have to estimate how much it's going to take to get the project done.
• Make sure what's going on is realistic. How much it's going to cost, how long it's 
going to take, etc.
• Murphy's Law: What can go wrong, will go wrong. Prepare for it.
• One option is to offer a bonus if the project is on time, and another bonus if it's under 
time or under budget.
• You may be getting some of the work done yourself - you'll serve as a role model for 
the rest of the team.
• Get the group together and have a conversation about it. Let everyone talk, ask what 
they think.
1. "If they help plan the fight, they won't fight the plan."
• Problem Solvers love to punch holes in arguments, say it can't be done, etc. So let 
them have an opportunity to express their views. You'll learn something.
• Deming: only 6% of the responsibility of a mistake is on the employee. 94% of it was 
the system, in other words, what YOU as the leader were responsible for. How could 
the system have supported the employee better?
1. When a screw up happens, take responsibility for it yourself. Superstars will beat 
up on themselves anyway.
• Two powerful ways to create a sense of urgency and boost your team's productivity:
1. Have a daily meeting/huddle. 15-30 minutes. Stand up if in person. Each person 
gives a quick progress update.
2. Ask everyone on the team to give a quick daily update by email at the end of each 
day: result I got, challenges, questions. Should take no more than 5-10 minutes to 
write. Put new hires on daily updates for the first 30 days - it'll show you a lot 
about them.