Posts Tagged work
Motivate me
Posted by Thomas in The Project Manager on March 2nd, 2007
We’ve all heard the speeches at some point. You know, the ones your manager flings around to help you get motivated for whatever crap you have to deal with. Motivation in the workplace is a big thing. I get it, I really do. With it people perform better, deliver more value, blah blah blah.
But how do you motivate people? Not being a particularly people-oriented person myself it takes quite a bit of effort. I find it difficult to relate the “classroom” teaching of motivational speakers to actual workplace situations. There’s help out there however. Taking the things backwards may prove to be a helpful way of looking at things.
Just today my boss came up to me to share his latest find: despair.com. The site made its name through a series of De-Motivation posters and a management book, “The Art of Demotivation“. Flipping through the site’s pages - and especially the videos in the Spin section - proves to be a helpful reminder of how some things you see every day are just plain wrong. I highly recommend the one on “Addressing Employee Complaints“.
Back from COS
Posted by Thomas in Reflexive blurbs on February 19th, 2007
So I’m back from Colorado Springs - COS is the term we use in the office as we have a tendency to refer to locations by their airport code. It was a freezing week with the low point at -25 Celsius no account taken for the wind chill factor.
While it was a jam packed work week I did have a chance to go out and about on the weekend. The area has some beautiful spots such as the Garden of the Gods, 7 falls, Royal Gorge bridge, some outlets,… Anyhow. You can find the pics in the usual spot.
The future tense of “I give”
Posted by Thomas in The Project Manager on August 17th, 2006
In a concious effort to improve my influencing skills recently began reading a book on it by R. Cialdini. I’ve found it to not only to be an informative but also a very entertaining read. The examples for the psychological tools used are vivid, to the point and quite frankly amusing.
One particular part which I liked was regarding Reciprocation - a concept stating that we try to repay in kind, what another person has provided us. To illustrate the pervasiveness of this rule an illustration was given regarding a fifth grader. When asked to give the future tense of “I give”. His response was “I take”.
Job description
Posted by Thomas in The Project Manager on July 11th, 2006
When your boss sends you a mail titled “is this our role…” with the enclosed picture you gotta wonder: are we on the right path?
I for one find it a wonderful illustration as it reminds me of the dangers of managing a project without the proper level of authority. I am left to ponder if this is what a project manager is reduced to if he fails to obtain the necessary authority, through a charter or the equivalent, to apply oganizational resources to project activities.
The monkey’s fault
Posted by Thomas in Reflexive blurbs on January 23rd, 2006
From: Yves
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2006 12:48 PM
To: Thomas
Subject: RE: Questions for Global Town HallWHY IS THERE SO MUCH HATE IN THIS WORLD !!!!
can’t we just all get along ?
From: Thomas Vanparys
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2006 5:44 PM
To: Yves
Subject: RE: Questions for Global Town HallIt’s all because of the way God made bananas curved. You see, back in the days when we just stepping up from monkeys to semi-humans we started to figure stuff out and ask questions – the first one of which was: “why are bananas curved like that?”. As with all questions for which technology has yet to give an answer, opinions varied. As these early semi-humans started on their way to an explanation ideological schools formed regarding this big issue. This laid the groundwork for the common “us/them” mentality. The start of all our woes.
PM: What do I do all day?
Posted by Thomas in The Project Manager on November 30th, 2005
Or rather what do I whish I was doing all day. There’s a nice White Paper over at Comprehensive Solutions explaining - in layman’s terms - what a Project Manager actually is and could be expected to do.
Just in case you wondered…
The expensive part
Posted by Thomas in The Project Manager on November 19th, 2005
In the 4 years since I started working on software projects I noticed one recurring theme with developers. Minor details such as documentation, error-handling, editing of user inputs, and testing are so boring that they don’t count! This somehow reflects my very first projects - you know the ones where your boss says: “hey I need this and that” - which I naively equated with 3 major tasks: defining the requirements, getting it developed and dumping it on a server somewhere
I’ve wisened up since then, have the developers?
Developing Leadership
Posted by Thomas in The Project Manager on October 10th, 2005
Sometime ago I went on a management development programme. One of the topics we covered was “managing ambiguity”. What I took away from the subject was that it was the leader’s responsibility to manage the ambiguity, not his people’s. Hence his communication should be clear and unequivocal so as to ensure the team is aligned and no ambiguity is left for them to struggle with.
A sharp reminder of what to was brought to my attention a couple of days ago. This is what was said to a team of individual contributors by a director
[...] our “Operate Independently collectively” strategy is still [...]
You just have to love the managment speak.
Update:I’ve found the origninal text he was referring to! Just to show how things get distilled as it gets passed down the chain:
Operate independently, Compete collectively, Manage collaboratively.
Starting out
Posted by Thomas in The Project Manager on September 8th, 2005
So I’m slowly working myself into my new job. There’s plenty to learn as the area I’m working on is not familiar at all.
I sat in on a project telco today. Something that a PM said to an Ops person just made my day:
We’re focusing on keeping you alive, not the quality of your living
It’s a total confidence builder!
Last day
Posted by Thomas in Reflexive blurbs on July 29th, 2005
It was my last day today. The hand-over was finished on time and I believe my successor will be successful. I invited a few colleagues to the Biergarten next to the tower for a last dirink. Walking home I took this shot, no tears, no regrets, just good memories.