In 1985, Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) moved me from Chicago where I had worked in its R&D facility, to its headquarters in the ARCO Plaza in Los Angeles, to head up a strategic planning group for ARCO Products Company. The day I arrived to find my new office was really exciting. As I walked through the corridors of my new floor, I happened to see a … [Read more...] about What is the Foundation for your Project Team Leadership?
Project Information
Project Managers: Be Certain that your Message to Your Project Team is the Right One
When I was a Project Manager with UNOCAL 76 Products Company in southern California in the mid-1990s, one of my roles was to manage the build-out and opening of Convenience Stores (C-stores) according to our UNOCAL Fastbreak Program. Convenience stores were added to some existing 76 Products fueling sites and C-stores were also introduced at new sites. Typical sizes for these … [Read more...] about Project Managers: Be Certain that your Message to Your Project Team is the Right One
How the New York Yankees Influenced my Career Choice in Process Improvement
As active project managers and PMO leaders, we need to look beyond just "linear thinking" and explore some other ways of examining situations, gathering information, and making decisions. "Nonlinear thinking" "systems thinking," and "integrative thinking" are just a few variations we need to be aware of and use occasionally. This blog post is about "linear" versus "nonlinear" … [Read more...] about How the New York Yankees Influenced my Career Choice in Process Improvement
How to Capitalize on the Life Cycle Position of your Project to Determine the Best Applications of Energy and Activity Levels for Your Project Team
As most of my readers know, for the past twenty years I have been actively involved in defining project practices and in leading project teams to successful completion of projects. I have learned a great deal through direct experience, feedback from other project managers, and from benchmarking my own organization’s practices versus those of others. But I never cease to … [Read more...] about How to Capitalize on the Life Cycle Position of your Project to Determine the Best Applications of Energy and Activity Levels for Your Project Team
What is “Leverage” and How Can Project Managers Use It To Their Advantage?
Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes said "Give me a place to stand, and with a lever I will move the whole world." As a project manager, you have probably used the term "lever" in the engineering or physics context to describe a device that can be used to gain a "mechanical advantage" in a given scenario. It means that you can apply force, in varying amounts, to … [Read more...] about What is “Leverage” and How Can Project Managers Use It To Their Advantage?