Engineers know best
November 28, 2011
On Friday of last week I spent an hour arguing with an engineer about the role of the project manager on a civil engineering project. I failed to convince him that there was more to it than being an engineer and that to be an excellent project manager more than a one day training course would be needed. It seems to me that most (more than 50%) engineers believe that domain experience is essential and the rest is just common sense. It’s a good job that all civil engineering projects are on time, on budget and don’t cause havoc for stakeholders…
What do you do when you can’t manage the conflict?
August 4, 2010
We have just uploaded our latest Lucid Thought which is the title of this blog – click here if you would like to read it – Lucid Thought 74. Conflict is inevitable in projects and knowing how to deal with it can really help!
Remember all 74 of our Lucid Thoughts can be downloaded from our website – click here – Lucid Thoughts.
It’s all chicken!
July 8, 2010
This is a quote from my business partner Ruth Murray-Webster in reference to exam based training. What she means is that nobody can really tell the difference, at least from the marketing blurb, between any of the courses that lead to PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner. APMP IC and APMP or PMI CAPM and PMP. Even though we know that our courses have been designed by training professionals and that they make use of the most up-to-date training methods, largely based around accelerated learning, this doesn’t seem to matter. It appears that the single most important factor is price. While we must admit that this has to be an important factor surely there are other criteria. Having fun on a training course and being able to remember what you learned three months later must be also be important? Or is it just a need to pass the exam and the cheapest price possible that drives selection? If this is the case we have lost the battle. We found out today that QA Training are selling a course that we offer at £985 including exam fee for £795. We know our training is better but it looks like we can’t compete in the chicken market, that is if we want to make any money. Time to look for new avenues maybe.
Accelerated Learning – what is it and why does it matter?
July 7, 2010
We have just uploaded our latest Lucid Thought which is the title of this blog – click here if you would like to read it - Lucid Thought 73. The reason we have written this piece is because we believe in it i.e. Accelerated Learning and therefore wherever possible we base our training programmes on its principles. Not only does Accelerated Learning improve recall it also making learning more fun for both the participants and the presenters and we like that. Get in contact if you want to know more.
Remember all 73 of our Lucid Thoughts can be downloaded from our website – click here – Lucid Thoughts.
Fact, Fiction, Future
July 1, 2010
I have just completed the facilitation of Day 1 of a two-day project risk management course leading to APM’s Risk Level 2 qualification. The proper description of risks using the structured risk description technique or metalanguage plays a fundamental part of this course. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about this says that all risks should be described using the cause – risk event – effect structure i.e. because of this fact, something might occur that would then cause a positive or negative impact on one or more of the project objectives. For long time I have been trying to summarise this structure in a simple manner and today I did it! FACT – FICTION – FUTURE… FACT because the cause must be true i.e. not uncertain; FICTION because the risk is not actually true as it might not occur; FUTURE because the effect will be later and not now. I will no doubt write more on this later.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results
June 25, 2010
This is one of my favourite quotes. It is often attributed to Albert Einstein but following extensive desktop research I can confirm that this might not be the case. Indeed there are many others who have been connected to it including Benjamin Franklin; not that this matters to what I have to say. The reason why it came to mind was following a discussion during the three-day training event I concluded yesterday for an international pharmaceutical company. I have been working with the pharma organisation in question for over 13 years. One of the areas where I have worked with them extensively is risk management. A topic that they say is key to their project success but as yet have found it impossible to make it work. Despite many attempts to convince them that they need to do something different and that processes and process training are not the answer they still insist on doing more of the same. Although this is good for our training business it really isn’t good for them. I’m now wondering what I can do to convince them that a very different approach is needed. An approach that includes changing the culture around risk management, leading to risk management becoming embedded in all day-to-day project activities and not just something that gets done once at the beginning (because you have to) and is then put away. I have a few ideas on this and my business partner Ruth will have more as she is an expert in this area (you might want to check out her blog http://ruth.lucidusblog.com. I’ll let you know how I get on.
Project Managers don’t do any work!
June 23, 2010
Many years someone said to me that in an ideal world Project Managers don’t do any work. What was meant was that Project Managers (PMs) manage others doing the work i.e. creating the deliverables for a project. Unfortunately for many PMs this ideal world does not exist and they are torn between managing the work of others and doing some of the work themselves. However maintaining this split personality can often mean two things; firstly the project doesn’t get managed properly and secondly any work done by the PM isn’t done well. Leading on from yesterday’s blog, where I commented on PMs not having enough time to the their job, this actually makes things worse as there is now even less time to carry out a real PM role. I believe there is an easy answer to this. In my opinion it is better to have one PM managing multiple projects (and not doing any of the work) than having PMs who both manage and do. This way a PM’s project management skills can be focussed on the ‘real’ job, and as a consequence they will be improved, while rightly and appropriately ignoring the need or temptation to get involved in the detailed project work. This will have the additional benefit of improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the now full-time PMs with a potential to reduce overall headcount; which is I’m sure something that a lot of you might like to hear.
If only we had time…
June 22, 2010
I’ve just completed Day 1 of the new training course (Module 2 of a two part development programme). As an introduction to this event participants were asked what successes or problems they had encountered as a result of implementing the things they had learned in Module 1; Planning and Organising a Project. Unfortunately from the group of 16 only one success was offered up which was to do with the identification of a risk that if it had occurred would have seriously jeopardised a project. Although this was a good example what is worrying is what was also said which can be paraphrased as “we don’t have enough time to do the things we learned”. In other words we don’t have enough time to perform the ‘text book’ role of the project manager; i.e. plan the project properly, identify and respond to risks, engage with and manage stakeholders etc. So why is this? The organisation in question has spent a relatively large amount of money on training these people and then appears to be withholding the ability to practice what has been preached to them. Is this because ‘they’ are stupid or is it because they actually don’t believe in project management as a means of making a difference? In truth they can’t be stupid so therefore it must be the latter. So why train people in something they can’t use? The only answer I can come up with is that it is seen to be a good thing to train people in project management, and it is also what others are doing and therefore following the trend is easier than saying no to this type of training. The only problem with this is the demotivating effect of training someone and then not allowing then to do it. Having said this maybe some of what is learned will be put to good use even if it is difficult to do so and is largely unsupported by those who would benefit most from it.
Classroom based training – does it work?
June 21, 2010
Starting tomorrow I will be delivering with a colleague a three-day training course for a well known international pharmaceutical company. The course is the second module of two and is focussed on how to monitor and control your project (the first module looked at how to plan your project). This is a bespoke event that includes both elements of ‘text book’ project management as well as the processes used within the company itself. A great deal to time and effort has gone into designing this events such that it is highly interactive and includes numerous exercises and activities that will/should enhance the learning experience.
You might be asking so why the title to this blog? Even though I make most of my living out of delivering development programmes I have for a long time been concerned by the claim made by Tony Buzan (the inventor of Mind Mapping) that at least 80% of detailed information learned during a one-hour learning period is lost within 24 hours unless specific efforts are made to key the information into long-term memory. I know we have done a good job in creating this event however I worry that many classroom based training events are still not designed with the learner in mind and therefore are of little value to the sponsoring organisation. I thought the phrase ‘death by PowerPoint’ was a thing of the past but unfortunately from recent experience I know its not. Hopefully the training event we have designed has enough ‘keys’ in it to mean that what we teach gets remembered not only for the next 24 hours but also for a long time afterwards. Only time will tell.
It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts
June 18, 2010
This is the final quote from John Wooden that I will use; at least for the time being anyway. To me this quote has multiple meanings both from a personal and a project/business perspective. Being an arrogant know-it-all myself it took me a long time to realise that there were things I could learn from the wisdom of others. It wasn’t until I was nearly 50 that I woke up to the fact that I could learn more and as a result I started to read more and engage in more self development. I also started to realise that sometimes I wasn’t right and that others had points of view as well.
Projects and businesses need to learn continually; no project team or business can know it all. However it seems to me that many projects are executed with an organisational belief that everything that is needed to be known is known and that there is nothing new that can help. This is often corroborated by the lack of formal lessons learned from previous projects or alternatively an unwillingness to discuss past mistakes. I certainly work with one organisation where discussing past project misdemeanours is frowned upon resulting in a false sense of complete knowledge and total surprise when the same mistake happens time and again. Acknowledging that we don’t know-it-all can really help us personally and the projects we work on. We should not be afraid to say I don’t know even when you are supposed to be the either the subject matter expert or the most senior person around.