Help Yourself
For a long time now I thought I understood the adage that in order to best help others, you need to be able to help yourself. It turns out that there are some things that you don’t truly understand until you experience them in action. Read more
Education and Experience (Chicken and Egg)
I ran into an interesting situation yesterday, as a mentor for an intensive PM program. The session had just started this week, and I was face to face with a person that was adamant that she did not qualify for the program, while I saw things quite differently. This was quite the opposite of most situations of this type, where the candidate is overstating their qualifications to get into a program. Read more
Get Your Ears On
As we gain more experience and expertise in our selected domains, there becomes a stronger tendency to lean primarily on that knowledge to solve problems. Sometimes this works, but sometimes we tend to lean too far in that direction and forget that we should be listening before we start solving. There are times when we need to remind ourselves to get our ears on. Read more
ESL
I asked teams in a workshop this week to come up with issues they faced, and one group identified their biggest issue as a failure to communicate. As they listed their root causes for this extremely broad issue, ESL came up in the list. More importantly, though, came an insight that expands on that theme of using a different language on each other. Read more
Pinballed
There are as many opinions about how to improve your business as there are consultants – likely more. While it may appear on the surface that there are large groups with the same message, you will find that as you dig deeper, everyone’s message is nuanced with their own experiences and biases. There is a right answer for you out there, but you need to watch that you don’t get bounced around like a pinball. Read more
