Management, Coaching, Consulting, Project services

A few days ago, I was on a call where we were discussing the status of each person's projects and ideas. One individual was visibly upset because their project wasn't progressing as quickly as they had hoped. The reason? The people they were relying on weren't being as reactive as needed. The facilitator had a brilliant approach to this situation. Instead of letting the person dwell on the lack of support, they suggested looking at the story from a different angle: rather than waiting for others to take action, why not drive the action yourself? Don't just stop at proposing ideas; take the lead and make them happen. And this is especially important when the project is important for you, but for the other party it’s just one more thing to do on their plate, and maybe not even a top priority. When you’re telling yourself the story of “they don’t care about this important project”, don’t forget to consider the story from their shoes as well.  Also, way too often we tend to...

Incremental development is one technique used in Project Management to progressively develop your project scope and work, while the project is running. So rather than spending a lot of time and effort in the beginning of the project to discover all the requirements, and do all the estimates, and uncover all unknowns, you decide to start with something that allows you to begin working, and then - as project details uncover - you update your project plans accordingly. Well, here is the great idea: why not use the same technique when developing yourself? Why not use it when coaching and developing your people? Rather than saying you need to become somebody else in one year, or two years, or more - you can start the transformation today with one first step. You cannot expect that the transformation happens over night - you have to gradually work on you in order to change one thing, then another, and then another... and while experimenting a new style, or applying a new lesson, yo...

Yes, you should care about your people, especially when they give in too fast! I had one situation today that was really amazing: one of my people said they won't pursue an opportunity, although the most fervant demandeur for it! What would you do in this situation?? As you are in the fast forward area, where everything has to happen yesterday, today does not exist, and we are always building our future... the most logical reaction would have been: fine, let's see who else would be interested. But I did one surprising thing: I've asked: WHY do you want to not give it try? And we had a chat about it, and then a face-to-face discussion, where I've listened to the other, trying to understand what was going on beyond the "I don't want it anymore", and asking a lot of questions. At some point of the discussion, and not even too far into it, the other asked me: why do you even bother with me? I'm a bad person, and I've just changed my mind after ...