Too Busy to Think
By Sarah
Gilbert
Overloaded managers run the risk
of making bad decisions and alienating themselves from important information
Everyone has had a conversation with someone who clearly wasn’t listening. You know the signs. Maybe their eyes
keep drifting toward their computer monitor or they keep making faces at people in the hall. This person probably
thinks they are multi-tasking, a favorite pastime of the overbooked, but mostly they are just absorbing less
information and being rude at the same time.
Running from one meeting to the next or spending lots of time responding to e-mail and voicemail actually can be
a recipe for becoming more out of touch. It seems like a paradox, but using all this new technology to stay in
touch, might be sending the wrong message to people who really need to speak with you. And it’s probably not giving
you much time to really process the information, either.
... full article
Do your clients seem
crazy?
By Sarah Gilbert
Seemingly erratic behavior by customers or managers cannot be understood without considering their
beliefs and circumstances.
I had worked in technology consulting for less than a year when I started to realize that all of our clients
were “crazy.” At least that’s what most of my co-workers thought, and I was starting to agree with them.
For a while, I wondered if it was us. Was there something special that our company offered that seemed to
attract the biggest loons? So, I changed jobs to work with different clients and different co-workers. But those
clients were crazy, too. (Even crazier, actually.)
... full
article
Project manager best behaviors - or how to tell if you're doing a good
job
By Sarah Gilbert
Project management can be a thankless job. When the project is going well, people often focus on the whole team,
itself, or the importance of the outcome of the project. When the project is going badly, the project manager can
often be called out on the carpet, berated and sent back to their desk to fix things. It’s easy to feel like there
are more kicks than compliments for project management work.
So, if you are feeling down, there are some ways to figure
out if you are still doing a good job in spite of the red stoplights in your project status
report.
... full article
Multi-tasking: A pretend
phenomenon
By Sarah
Gilbert
It is very
common these days to hear people talk about multi-tasking. Many believe multi-tasking helps them to be more
efficient, get more things done and generally be available to everyone all the time. Ready access to
information through Blackberrys, cell phones, text messaging and e-mails perpetuate the ability to
multi-task.
But numerous studies have demonstrated that multitasking — at least in the way
that most people hope it will work — doesn’t really exist. ...
... [Read the full article]
Learn from my biggest mistakes
By Sarah Gilbert
Gurus love to tell us that we
learn the most from the mistakes we make. I’m not sure that is true, and I’ve made lots of mistakes,
so I should know. I will say that my mistakes have been some of my most memorable and conscious
(painful!) learning opportunities. I thought that by sharing some of them, I might help others to not
repeat them. Although, based on my experience, I am likely to make these mistakes again and so are
you!
Don’t take things personally
This could possibly be
the golden rule of project management. If you ever entirely master this skill, please let me know. I will
sit at your feet to learn how you achieved greatness.
Read the full
article
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