The Project Manager Vision

You can seize only what you can see. A great leader's courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position. Every Project Manager should manage his/her career as a project, or we may say like a program. We must manage many projects in our life and one of them is our professional developement as a project manager. To grow up personally and professionally should be a project manager obligation. It needs time, effort, passion, persistence and patience. To get a handle on vision and how it comes to be a part of a good leader's life, understand these things:... Read More»

Project Manager Responsibility

Project success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility. The one quality that all successful people have is the ability to take on responsibility. I strongly believe that a project leader can give up anything except responsibility. On the other hand project leaders must lead by example, and transmit to their people that the sense of responsibility is fundamental for team and project success. Good project leaders never embrace a victim mentality. They recognize that who and where they are remain their responsibility. They never complain. During years I have observed some characteristics of project leaders who embrace... Read More»

Effective building relationships

Theodore Roosvelt said: "The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people". Team members don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care. The ability to work with people and develop relationships is crucial to effective leadership. What can a project manager do to manage and cultivate good relationships as a leader? I have a few suggestions to follow: 1. Understand people: Many times we are not listening to our team members, just hearing them. The first quality to develop as a relational leader is the ability... Read More»

Focus on your strengths

At the beginning of my professional career as a project manager I was responsible for three projects in Spain at the same time. There weren't very complex projects but they needed time, effort and focus. As the maturity level in project management from my executives was not high, they thought I'd be able to chase "three rabbits" at the same time; I mean to manage three projects at the same time effectively. That situation complicated my life, and it stressed me. However, I did it and was a great opportunity for me to be aware that "focus is a must".... Read More»

Competent project managers

Competence is the ability to perform a specific task, action or function successfully. We live difficult busines times, so organizations are looking for competent project managers. Project management competence goes beyond words. It’s leader’s ability to say it, plan it, and do it in such a way that others know that you know how, and know that they want to follow you. I always admire project managers who display high competence. They are professionals always ready to learn and always moving one step beyond. They are people without fear to make mistakes, people able to recognize it and also able... Read More»

Project Team Adaptability

Inflexibility is one of the worst project manager failings. You can learn to check impetuosity, overcome fear with confidence, and laziness with discipline. But for inflexibility of mind I did not find any antidote. It carries the seeds of its own destruction. I found some project managers who want to impose their habitudes and schedule when they work for a customer project. In my opinion you must be flexible and adaptable to the customer shedule if you want to achieve the customer team integration. I always defend that wherever yo go you must live as they live, eat as they... Read More»

The end of the tunnel

Many things have been told about the financial crisis we are living worldwide. Most of them have been negative, focused on the problems and issues but not on the alternatives or potential solutions. I know some professional colleagues who are all the time complaining about the crisis and their effects instead of being focused on potential alternatives to move forward. They are not doing anything different than business as usual. I have a small project management consulting company and I am dealing with survival every day, as the rest of the professionals in my sector. Every month I need to... Read More»

Managing your risk attitude

Projects are full of risks. Every day project managers must make decisions where the outcome matters but where the conditions surrounding the decision are more or less uncertain. Faced with these circumstances, most project managers have developed habits and strategies that enable their lives to "deal with risk" for much of the time. It is only in the presence of an unusual risk that people may be conscious of the need to make a choice. The management of these uncertain situations that matter, also known as risk management, is a discipline in its own right. It has an established role... Read More»

Why to invest in Project Magement today?

Due to the financial crisis most of companies in Europe are focused in decreasing organizational costs, firing people, reorganizing human resources assignments, and reducing investments in their organizations. Most of projects that started by the last quarter of 2008 were stopped in 2009. Panic has become a common behavior from different companies worldwide. That news is bad but the worst news is that the main reason is not because all those companies were in a bad financial situation, most of them were healthy financially talking, but it is because they observed the affected companies effects and tried to prevent potential... Read More»

The project manager must be persistent

My father taught me the power of persistance. Everything in life, every try, every effort needs persistance. Project managers need to be persistent to achieve project success. Education does not sustitute persistance, because the project world has some well trained but unsuccessful project professionals. Only persistance and determination achieve everything. It is not unsual to find young project managers giving up in situations where they are demotivated or frustrated in a particular project. I can remember the first project I managed, traveling all time through Spain and managing a team of people older than me. I made many mistakes in... Read More»