#106 – CRESCENT WRENCH VS. BOX WRENCH – MARK MOORE

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Posted on September 5, 2015 by

Odd title I know, but do you expect anything different from me? I had this thought a while back – a memory of past busted up knuckles to be clear – that my family didn’t have many tools while I was growing up. If we had any specific size box or open-end wrenches, they were few and far between and probably in pretty bad shape. No, when I was a boy and I needed to do something on my bicycle, I had to rely on that good old standard, the adjustable crescent wrench. Continue reading →

#102 – ASSUMPTIONS: WHAT YOU KNOW MAY KILL YOU – HOWARD WIENER

Posted on August 9, 2015 by

In his post Cause of Death: Invalid Assumptions, my colleague Mark Moore observed that project risk management often excludes consideration of underlying assumptions on which event probabilities and prospective impacts are based. Obviously, we cannot operate without relying on what we know or we would have to reinvent the wheel every time we had to go somewhere. On the other hand, failing to challenge what we believe we know or to consider the possibility that there are relevant factors about which we have no idea (so-called “unknown unknowns”) can result in vastly underestimating risks or missing opportunities. This article will raise questions more than it will provide answers but it does suggest that some changes in PM discipline can help reduce the risks our assumptions create. Continue reading →

#85 – CORPORATE CATARACTS – MARK MOORE

Posted on March 20, 2015 by

Leadership with vision is great. It’s absolutely necessary. But it won’t get you where you
intend to go if you have no strategy to fulfill it. Like anything else, it takes planning and action. Oh, and it takes strategy. Far too many corporate executives equate vision with strategy and use the terms interchangeably. That’s a big mistake. You might even equate it with having “Corporate Cataracts”. Continue reading →

#42 – MR. TOAD’S WILD RIDE (A LESSON IN STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT) – MARK MOORE

Posted on March 2, 2014 by

The classic book The Wind in the Willows was a bit of a difficult read for me in my younger years. In fact, I’m pretty sure I didn’t actually finish it. I recall it got kind of bogged down and philosophical and that really didn’t appeal to me as a pre-teen. So I put it back on the shelf and went on to something more action-packed. I didn’t think about it until recently when my manager brought it up … most specifically the part that Disney leveraged to create the title ride for this article. Continue reading →

#41 – WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW COULD KILL – YOUR PROJECT – MARK MOORE

Posted on February 15, 2014 by

I’m going to leverage one more story about my daughter, because it clearly illustrates a problem my wife and I could have avoided had we not been so intent at placing our own interpretation and ‘knowledge’ on the situation.

She must have been about two when this started. She’d come to us a little frightened and start to explain what was bothering her. She kept repeating the word ‘because’ and we naturally asked, ‘Because what?’ The short version is that my wife finally figured out she was saying ‘big claws’ and this was a result of some nightmare. It wasn’t the two of us who did the deducing … instead my daughter (obviously frustrated with her idiot parents) used a different word. She said ‘fingernails’ instead … and the barrier was broken. Continue reading →

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