jim@millikenproject.com

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Monday, December 28, 2015

Delegation, the Missing Essential

     Try this little experiment:
     Pick one of your most intelligent, trustworthy, responsive associates. Time yourself at five minutes in describing some function of yours that the person has never done or seen. Keep it verbal. Explain freely in response to the person’s questions but take no more than five minutes.
     Make it something of moderate complexity.
     Then remain silent and uninvolved as the person carries out the function. Neither person speaks and there is no other kind of communication. Do not set a hard-and-fast time limit for this phase.
     Take notes on what happens, especially at points where the person forgets or ignores your instructions, or adds/changes parts of the process.
     At a suitable point, stop the experiment and discuss with the other person what happened, and why. Perhaps the instruction was at fault, leaving out elements that were so second-nature to you that you never thought to include them. Ones your partner had no way to know exist.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

There Is No Perfect Process. Why? People.

     There is no limit to the varieties of Project Management methodologies out there, but they all share a couple of characteristics: Assurance in the presentation that this is the approach that accounts for everything, and that it works.
     Some of the books and programs also tell you further that this is the only design that really works. And there are some that ascribe inherent flaws to competing formulations, thereby highlighting the claimed superiority of their own.
     None of this is true.
 

Monday, December 14, 2015

Attitude Is Intentional

     Attitude. It’s what makes the difference.
     Skill can take you a good ways, at times. So can persistence. And assistance from powerful friends. Sometimes far enough, but nothing is assured.
     And there’s confidence.
     Confidence is the expectation of a positive outcome in whatever you’re doing. It is the driver of a winning attitude.
     Attitude and confidence. Confidence and attitude. No question, expectation of success can fuel a winning attitude. If you are sure you’re going to make it, then you act that way – and you succeed, often.
     But what happens when you don’t feel all that confident? When you’re missing that surge of confidence to drive you over the finish line, can you do it on attitude?
     You bet you can, and the people who live and work that way are the ones we admire the most.