Relationship Management

Articles for the Relationship Management category follow:

What Matters Most in Life also Matters in Projects
By Raymond Posch

The other day I came across a recap of one of the most enduring and fascinating research studies ever done on human behavior and the factors that matter in success and happiness. I have read reports on this study periodically over the last couple of decades as my interest in the subject has grown.

The study set about to analyze which factors matter most in whether a person is successful (by various measures), healthy, happy, and regards his life as well lived when he looks back in the later years of life.

The project was called the Grant Study, named after it's sponsor, W.T. Grant, the founder of a department store chain. For 72 years, the study at Harvard tracked the lives of 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s.

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What makes a good project sponsor?
By Elizabeth Harrin

Having a good, active project sponsor is one of the ways you can ward off project failure. So if you are in the enviable situation of being able to choose who you have as your project sponsor, you need to look for someone who will do a good job. And what sort of person is that, then?

Well, a sponsor is the project’s figurehead, someone who represents the project team at board meetings, who looks out for the project’s interests, who can provide strategic direction and most importantly, wants whatever it is the project is going to achieve. Every project should have a sponsor. Ideally, they should be someone who is going to have to live with the results of the project for long after the project manager has moved on. A sponsor who is not implicated in the delivery will find it hard to be motivated by the project and may be unable to take decisions about something that is outside their sphere of influence.

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Book Review: Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers
By Elizabeth Harrin

Firstly, a big SORRY to Anthony Mersino. Anthony sent me his book at the end of last year and it has taken me forever to get around to posting a review.

That’s not because I haven’t read it. On the contrary, as soon as it arrived I picked it up and then couldn’t put it down. And there aren’t that many business books that I can sit and read cover to cover without being bored.

It’s the book I wished I’d written. If you don’t own a copy, go out and get one.

That’s the short review. If you want to know a bit more about what you’d be investing in if you buy a copy, then read on…

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