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Twas the night before PMO Christmas and more projects could fail, They seemed to be on track, but then started to derail. Management was concerned but figured it could get through, But how that would happen, no one really knew. Business stakeholders were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of revenue danced in their heads. But they didn’t realize, they were in for a mess, For they had no Best Practices to ensure their success. Now the projects became hindered, falling short of their goals, And it seemed not everyone even knew their roles. Milestones were not clear, delivery dates came and went, Funding was dwindling and not tracked on how spent. There was no rhyme or reason for how things were assigned, And the projects in progress were not business aligned. For what was being worked on was not the right mix, And no one was capturing any meaning-ful metrics. Requirements were running wild, revisions being stacked, Status Reporting was meaningless, for nothing was tracked. Ris...
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Sharing Responsibilities Makes a Great Leader!

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Great leadership comes with trust and with giving over responsibility to the people behind or under you. The more successful we want to be, the more we need to find a way to share some of that pressure and control with the people under us, and encourage them to do the same with those under them and so on. The universe works in such a way that a bit of everything we have and we work on cannot be for us, enjoyed by us, benefitted by us, used by us. Trying to hold onto everything only makes things smaller. Today, practice no attachment. No control. Let everybody else enjoy from the fruits. When you plant one seed, 100 people can enjoy the fruits, so don’t try to hold onto all of them.  I personally have found this to be true not only in my professional life but my personal life as well. Although this can be tough at sometimes (because after all, nobody handles responsibility as well as I do), it is greatly beneficial, rewarding and leads to a higher level of productivity and eve...
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Leaving The Comfort Zone Behind While On The Path To Success!

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Many people find themselves going through a transition sometime during their career.  Whether it is a proactive one (looking for a change) or a reactive one (where change is looking for you); career change happens.  Many people who proactively spend their time looking for a career change, end up looking for many things to be the same as in their previous environment.  Things like, a nice office, the amount of money, the commute time, the people/corporate culture as well as looking for many of the same comforts that they have grown accustomed to. One has to question whether we are looking for "real change" or just looking for things to be a little different.  With this type of thinking, we tend to build fences around ourselves and limit our true potential.  We don't necessarily go after our dream job, higher ambitions or life's purpose.  Rather we stay confound to where we think we are supposed to be.   In fact, whether we like it or not, we beco...
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Peace thru Project Management

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September 11, 2013 will mark the 12th year anniversary of those horrific events that took place on that day. As a result of those events, Americans bonded together as a family toward a common resolve. We became friendlier, had more tolerance for others, were more respectful, assisted and looked out for each other, had an increased sense of purpose and teamwork in the workplace and our overall appreciation for what we had was at its' highest...but this was temporary and did not last. Today, we are in the midst of many issues; challenged economy, wars overseas, civil unrest in many cities around the world, unemployment challenges, and just an overall feeling of unrest.   Even people who have jobs are more disgruntled than ever with their employers because they feel like their management "just doesn't care about them." There are however many organizations out there who's mission it is to bring Peace to the World. Many organizations such as Gree...
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Make Sure You Are Running Efficient Meetings...

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Have you ever been in a meeting that was totally out of control? In that meeting, did you notice that there was no formal agenda? In that same meeting, did it keep going off point and end up going down the road of too many tangents? During this time, was someone allowed to pontificate on things that had nothing to do with the advancement of the current meeting? In that meeting, was it apparent that the key people needed were not there since every item needed to be followed up on with someone who wasn’t at the meeting? Anytime during this meeting, did you feel that this meeting was going nowhere, your time was being wasted and that you should be doing something more productive? After the meeting, did you notice there was no communications regarding what was discussed, no key decisions or next steps? And finally, at the next follow-up meeting, were you totally "checked out" because the same things were being re-hashed from the last meeting with no evident progress? If you ...
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We have just about ended the first quarter of 2013 (my how time flies)!  Many of us have made new year's resolutions almost 90 days ago and as with every outgoing year, we tend to make lofty goals for the upcoming one. Whether it is to loose weight, stop bad habits, better our finances, advance our careers,  become more spiritual, learn a new skill, take up a new hobby, help more people or maybe it's to go through a multi-faceted personal transformation.  The excitement of bringing these resolutions tend to carry us through the first two weeks of January.  If we are lucky, they will last for at least 30 days following the clinking of our champagne glasses as the New Year enters.  Here is the problem.  We set ourselves up for failure right from the start.  We want instant gratification based on where we are at a given moment.  Take for instance the person who wants to lose 20lbs. They are surfacely focused on losing the 20lbs and that's as...
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The Toxicity of "Blame" in an Organization!

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Through my years as a corporate management consultant, I have witnessed "the good", "the bad" and "the ugly" of projects, teams, and corporate cultures.  At the root of "the worst" that I have observed was the too often embraced behavior of "blame."  Blame is a very toxic behavior that will rapidly unravel the fabric of your organization.     Blame (finger pointing, always looking for external reasons for mistakes) hinders the ability to learn from those mistakes and become more effective. When blame is accepted as part of the organization's culture, it will create very difficult work environments.  Research shows that people in the workplace tend to copy blaming as a behavior, whether consciously or unconsciously, thus perpetuating the problem. Scientific Studies show that when someone is the target of blame, their  brain to goes into  "fight or flight" protection mode.  This results in putting people on the defens...
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