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 [...]

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) [...]

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

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 [...]

Corner-cutting in Project Management

Elizabeth included this post from Sharp End Training’s blog (here).  I agree with her assessment of the post.  It is a good question but I would have like to seen a take on which corners are typically cut, not why corners were cut.  FWIW, here are my top ten corners typically cut:

Stakeholder management planning
Executing planned [...]

Training and qualifying sponsors

For those who need to educate their sponsors, the approach of the UK’s Home Office might at least inspire your next efforts (here, the syllabus is here).  The content looks very meaty.
This approach may only work in the public sector — I’m not sure how many senior folks in my organization would sit still for [...]

Mis-using Management by Exception

Mike Chitty’s post on “Whack a Mole Management” (here) prompted me to think about how I position and coach on management by exception.
Whack-a-mole is an arcade game in which you try to hit ‘moles’ that pop up randomly on a board using a rubber mallet….  Whack-a-mole management is based on the same principles.  The challenges [...]

Making sure that your deliverables’ benefits are realized

With all my recent scope management posts lately, here’s a timely post on benefits realization (here) at John Gough’s iJourneys blog (here).  I like the theme of his post, that “…benefit realisation does not start when the project ends.”   I also second his point that IT sees itself as apart from the “business” and [...]

No surprise that Starbucks is closing more stores than first planned

I’ve always been amazed that the most popular post on Crossderry remains my first post on Starbucks’ attempts to re-invigorate their operations and brand (here).  Unfortunately, as some of my follow-ups on customer service issues hinted (here and here), the turnaround will be slower and more painful than it first appeared. 
In fact, I haven’t been to my local [...]

Keep the focus on outcomes

I’m not sure how I missed this one, but Jonathan at Manage by Walking Around conveys a great story about keeping desired outcomes and performing organizations aligned (here).  Per a number of earlier posts on the triple constraint and scope (here, here, and Bas’s post here), project managers need to get better attuned to the [...]