About a year ago, I wrote an article called Becoming a Sustainable Project Manager with an accompanying Sustainable PM Assessment. My hope at the time was that readers would understand the four sustainability drivers: 1. Skills 2. Lifestyle 3. Relationships 4. Stewardship …and develop action plans on how to be more sustainable. To help underscore the importance of being sustainable, here are four stories where, for each person, sustainability wasn’t a priority. Read more at ProjectManagement.com ..read more

I am a huge fan of 360-feedback evaluations, a tool in which a participant and their leader, peers and followers evaluate them using a series of structured questions. With the 360 evaluations I’ve gone through, the results were presented to me in terms of how I view myself versus how my leader, peers and followers viewed me. My first 360 was part of a five-day leadership offsite where survey participants completed the survey prior to the offsite and the results were given to us at the end of the third day. Prior to handing out the evaluation results, I can remember the offsite facilitator sa ..read more

One Monday morning, Kyle showed up for a status meeting with his project team. Eva, a team member and close friend, noticed a pattern: Kyle looked perpetually exhausted. Concerned, she approached him, “Kyle, are you okay?” “Yeah, just a hectic weekend with kids’ activities and prepping for the exec meeting this week.” “I certainly understand,” Eva said. “Are you taking time to rest up? I know how demanding your life is right now.” “I’ve got great work/life balance. It’s just very busy with everything going on,” Kyle said. “Kyle, you remind me of my father. Always running at 100 miles an h ..read more

I remember as a kid being entertained by plate spinners. The performer would spin bowls, plates or other flat objects on poles and keep them all spinning without falling off. I watched each plate spinner run from pole to pole, jiggling the pole to keep a plate from wobbling and falling off. The spinner had to prioritize those plates most likely to fall off the pole first, get them spinning again, them move on to the next teetering plate. Sometimes, the spinner was able to keep everything spinning; sometimes, a plate crashed to the ground, to the “oohs” and “aahs” of the crowd. Welcome to t ..read more

Some time back I was talking with a fellow project manager about a difficult issue he was having with his new boss.  The thumbnail summary of the discussion was that the project manager was feeling overly scrutinized and micro-managed.  Now I knew the project manager to be a capable professional who could confidently handle the work assigned to him.  Yet his boss insisted on managing every detailed aspect of his work.  More so, his boss was very critical of the work being done even though it was performed to professionally acceptable standard.  The situation became un ..read more

Recently I was having a discussion with a colleague. During the chat he made a comment that really resonated with me: “I love my career—not just because of what I do, but also what it enables me to do.” That one sentence seemed so simple, but so impactful. He was saying that his career was fulfilling, provided financially, and afforded him the flexibility to do non-work things that were really important to him. It was about both a great career and the benefits his career brought to the other aspects of his life. As I ruminated over the concept, it occurred to me that it might be helpful to ..read more

E.F. Hutton was a financial brokerage firm founded in 1904 by brothers Edward Francis and Frankly Laws Hutton. In the 1970s, E.F. Hutton created an advertising campaign with the slogan, “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.” The slogan implied that E.F. Hutton didn’t mince words, and that any advice given was valuable. For me, it ranks right up there with “Two all-beef patties…” and “Plop plop, fizz fizz…” Now that I’ve planted a couple of commercial jingles in your head that you may be singing the rest of the day, let’s get into how this is relevant to being ..read more

Mr. Creosote. Some of you may know the name. He was a character in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Portrayed by Terry Jones, Mr. Creosote ate and drank massive quantities in a French restaurant. At the end of the meal, the server (played by John Cleese) offered Mr. Creosote a wafer-thin mint. After some objection, Mr. Creosote agreed to eat the mint, which caused an unfortunate reaction. Those of you who know the skit (or just searched for it) know my description cleaned things up quite a bit. While most could have easily eaten the small mint without any adverse consequence, for Mr ..read more

Recently, my wife and I were watching a college football game between two highly ranked teams. Deep into the third quarter, only a few points separated the two teams. The quarterback took the snap, scrambled while looking for someone to pass to, and let the ball fly. The ball was intercepted by a linebacker and, with three teammates as an escort to block opposing players, made his way to the end zone. The linebacker, thinking he was in the end zone, dropped the ball to celebrate with his teammates. Upon replay, the linebacker dropped the ball at the 1-yard line—and a quick-thinking opposing ..read more

Years back, I hired a person I’ll call Del who came highly regarded with a strong resume. Del went through an interview loop that included one of my peer directors. I got my peer’s feedback—along with a “no hire” recommendation. After talking with my peer, I decided to hire Del anyway. Del made an almost immediate positive impact with the client organization he serviced. Shortly thereafter, though, I started hearing rumblings from Del’s peers within my organization about how he constantly said how busy he was and that he should not have to do some of the things his peers were expected to do ..read more