jim@millikenproject.com

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Sunday, October 30, 2016

Managing the Project People Resource


    I watched as a group of managers regaled themselves with tales of the laziness and incompetence of their employes. Their own employes, their workforce.
     It reminded me of a supervisor of nine specialists who said the job would be perfect if only he didn’t have to put up with the people. He was topflight at the work himself, but he couldn’t turn out that quality at 10 times the quantity. He needed those people and they needed him, but he didn’t see it that way.
     Such attitudes are not at all rare, and that’s too bad. They devalue one of the most important underlying realities of management, especially project management: Nothing happens without the people.
     Software engineering guru Watts Humphrey wrote that the work of technical managers is 90 percent people and 10 percent technology – but they spend most of their time on the technical management. It’s a lot less hassle that way.
     It’s also far less effective. The truth is that the human resource is the catalytic factor – the dynamic resource that makes possible the productive employment of all the others. Your equipment, materials, facilities and your very processes don’t do a thing until activated by your people.

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Belief, Focus, Creativity

     


      “I’m not creative.”
     “I don’t have musical talent.”
     “I’m always late.”
     “I can’t do math.”

     Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense and nonsense.
     You can generate brand-new ideas. You can play instruments, make pictures, discipline your schedule, manage intricate formulas. You just have to want to, enough so you’ll invest the time and attention you need to make it all happen.
     You can do what you put your mind to. You can’t do something you’ve decided not to try.
     That summarizes this business of talents and skills.