#27 – CAN I REALLY MOTIVATE MY TEAM? – MARK MOORE

Mark Moore

I had a challenge from a colleague to write something about the topic of motivation.  In thinking about this, I was reminded of all those slick posters we used to see with beautiful and striking scenes – all of them designed to focus you on some slogan or principle or other uplifting thought.

A lot of companies paid a whole lot of money to “motivate” their teams and bring cohesion to the workplace.  In fact, a lot of companies still do this even if it manifests in new ways (free beer Friday comes to mind).    Yet I’d like to ask one simple question if I may …

 

Can I as a team leader actually motivate my team? Continue reading

#25 – HISTORY LESSONS AND THE MUSTY SMELL OF REGRET – MARK MOORE

Mark MooreThe late Dr. Seuss was a favorite of mine (and continues to be even my adulthood).  He taught many lessons that were designed for both children and adults.  His shorter pieces were always fun and among them I hold the highest regard for one titled Too Many Daves.

It’s a simple premise about a woman with twenty-three sons all, as you might guess, named “Dave”.  The story briefly explains her exploits in calling the boys into the house, getting all twenty-three when she only wanted one.  She muses about a different life where she had named them all something different, but in the end, Seuss finishes with, “But she didn’t do it and now it’s too late.”  You can just smell the dank, musty aroma of regret hanging on that poor woman’s head. Continue reading

#24 – WHEN 8 WEEKS ISN’T REALLY 8 WEEKS – MARK MOORE

Mark MooreIt’s a tale as old as project management itself.  Somebody works up a very detailed project schedule and even assigns specific resources to tasks.  They even manage to do some basic allocation so Jake from Engineering isn’t working 120 hour weeks for the next five years. 

But in their diligence and detail, they overlook a couple of things.  They forget that everybody on the project has “a day job” they still have to get done and that recurring events like annual quality reviews or year ends or whatever still happen.  In missing them, they put the project at risk of an overly optimistic timeline with unrealistic true allocation. Continue reading

#23 – MAGIC WORDS AND ENCHANTED BEANS – MARK MOORE

Mark MooreSeveral discussions on LinkedIn recently have prompted me to think once again about how we place our projects and organizations at risk – sometimes severe risk – by relying on what amounts to “magic words and enchanted beans”.  And by that, I mean the tendency to either talk about buzzword tactics or strategies or throw tools at problems and believe we have actually implemented them.  Not only does this ignore the hard work of applying something we’ve never done before, it ends up as a fool’s errand and could cost us dearly in the end.  Give you some examples you say?  Certainly!  I’m glad you asked … Continue reading

#22 – TAKING A SWOT AT RISKS – MARK MOORE

Mark MooreAmong the classic tools for business and situation analysis, the SWOT work up is always a favorite.  But have we ever considered leveraging the analysis process and outcome to beef up our risk analysis and help us identify more project or operational risks (and their counterweight – opportunities)?  With some simple, practical applications, I believe we can do just that and bring additional value to our work. Continue reading