India Observations: Sacred Spaces and Compassion

Religion and spirituality still play openly in the Indian public square.  Of course, there are tons of temples great and small scattered about here.  More interestingly, the Times of India has a “Sacred Space” on its editorial page and a special “Spirituality” URL (here).  True to the syncrentist bent here, the quotes come from a range [...]

Virtual workers should interview themselves first…

Sara’s post at Pajama Professional about asking yourself tough questions before starting a home business (here) made me think about the challenges of telecommuting and virtual work.  I had been tagged for an interview about the topic — I didn’t make the cut — and my team is almost entirely virtual.  The topic is always [...]

Non-Financial Ways to Engage and Motivate

I hadn’t seen this blog before (here), but I liked this post that compiled tips focusing on non-financial incentives and practices (here).  The suggestion to “establish an appraisal system where clearly defined objectives are mutually agreed” seemed benign enough, but adding the phrase “appraisals should be continuous, not just once a year” put some punch [...]

Resentments and Doghouses

From my recent tag surfing spree, here’s a post from Barry Zweibel on making sure that one’s doghouse doesn’t get too full (here … hat tip: Your Executive Edge here).  His first paragraphs set up the story well:
We get mad. We get cranky. We judge. We blame. We put people on ice. Send them to Siberia. [...]

Is Starbucks’ stuck in the middle?

Thoughts after tag surfing….  A lot of the comments on the Starbucks store closings claim that the 600 closings are driven by location mistakes.  The recent internal memo from Howard Schultz listing the stores to close in July 2008 headlined the “poor real estate decisions” made (story here).  There has been a lot of talk of cannibalization (here) [...]

Status of women in China…observations

This is a follow up on a conversation I had with someone about the improving status and respect for women in China.  I made a note to myself to pay more attention while I was here, so here goes…
I’m attending the Asia-Pacific + Japan PMO summit here in Shanghai — BTW, I can get to WP [...]

New Poll — Corner Cutting in Project Management

Inspired by a post on Sharp End Training’s blog (here), my post (here), and a comment by PM Hut…
FYI, moved to right sidebar

Cheering up a gloomy project or initiative

I’m curious whether folks have any good stories about humor…I’ve found that a little bit of insanity always helps keep a project or an initiative fun (or at least bearable).  Also, showing that I can laugh at myself is a great way to loosen up the team.
I was on a busy team supporting the wave of [...]

Embedding Employee Engagement in your processes

Mike King at Learn This has a fairly long post on promoting employee engagement (here) — one last Hat Tip to the PM Blog Carnival (here).  I liked the thoughts in this passage especially:
Make it Part of The System … In order to ensure that employee engagement is something that gets attention, is measured and has [...]

Acknowledging fear when leading change

Wow, the latest PM Blog Carnival (here) sure had some blogworthy entries in this edition…this must be my fifth post inspired by it.  Louise Manning at The Human Imprint had a set of key change management steps (here), the foundation of which is her riff on the well-known Gandhi quote:
“You must be the change you [...]