Find the Right Business Mentor

June 28, 2010 Leave a Comment

Developing a relationship with the right mentor can be a significant step toward reaching your professional goals. Mentors help us gain new perspectives, make better plans, master advanced skills, meet new people, and focus our efforts. Finding the right mentor may seem like a daunting project unto itself, but remembering some simple guidelines will help you narrow the choices to those in the best position to help you succeed.

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Know what you want to achieve. Before you begin the process of finding a mentor, you must first clearly define your goals for the relationship.

  • Do you want to take on larger or more complex projects?
  • Are you looking for guidance on the best training and educational opportunities?
  • Do you need help working through an issue with a manager, coworker, or direct report?
  • Have you recently transitioned to a more challenging job?
  • Are you planning to pursue an opportunity that requires a different skill set than you have now?

Your mentor will have a wealth of experience to share with you as time goes on, but your initial search should be based on today’s goals.

Look outside your reporting relationships. While your supervisor may be a skilled and experienced professional, it’s often best to look for a mentor who isn’t likely to be in a position to give you bad news, assign unpleasant tasks, or favor a coworker for a coveted promotion. Instead, seek out the peers of those above you in the chain of command. Consider retired or semi-retired professionals, as they’re a terrific source of information and hard-earned expertise. Experts who teach classes in your area of interest may also be available to help you on a more individual basis.

Ask for referrals. Chances are good that your colleagues have developed fruitful relationships with mentors along the way. Inquire about who possesses the traits you’re most interested in developing, and who is approachable and professional. You might also check with any business organizations you belong to, as many have a mechanism to facilitate matching mentors and mentees in similar industries, locations, or areas of interest. Networking groups also frequently run mentor/mentee matching programs for their members.

Avoid mentors who may create a conflict of interest. Individuals with direct disciplinary control over immediate family members, vendors reliant on your company for favorable business decisions, and professionals working for competing organizations shouldn’t be considered for the role of mentor. Seemingly innocuous issues could someday turn out to be damaging or sensitive—better to avoid these potentially harmful situations than try to recover from them.

Be candid. Tell your potential mentor exactly which skills, qualities, or expertise you want to develop. You may be interested in improving your strategic planning skills, developing leadership abilities, or becoming savvier in your networking efforts. If there are specific issues you want to work on, be up front about them. Be sure to let your mentor know which areas are your weakest. It doesn’t do either of you any good to play 20 questions, so lay everything on the table and allow your mentor to help you navigate the issues.

Be realistic. Expecting a mentor to replace an intensive college-level course is setting both of you up for failure. Instead, seek out a mentor who has the expertise you ultimately want to gain, and ask them what type of help they can offer, or how they would recommend you proceed. Much of a mentor’s value lies in their perspective on career growth, in locating the right continuing education opportunities, and in their guidance on the development of new skills and experience.

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

Filed Under: Project Management, Project Management Tips Tagged With:

10 Tips to Improve Your Next Project Management Presentation

June 18, 2010 Leave a Comment

Presentations are powerful tools for relaying information, persuading key stakeholders, and displaying your team’s successes. Below are some tips to help make your next presentation a crowd pleaser.

1 – Avoid visual overload. Save the flashy animations for areas of your presentation that need additional emphasis. For everything else, stick to smooth, subtle transitions.

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2 – Don’t try to include everything. Distill your visual and verbal components down to the fundamentals, and make your message clear and concise.

3 – Keep charts and graphs clean and simple. Your audience’s comprehension level will increase if they can easily interpret the information you’re presenting.

4 – Select a handful of key points (about 4-6) that you most want your audience to remember. Focus on those elements throughout your presentation.

5 – Limit your jokes—you might not be as funny as you think—and remember to keep them appropriate to the audience. If in doubt, leave it out.

6 – Use note cards to get back on track if you’re interrupted or become flustered. A brief outline of talking points is usually all that’s needed.

7 – Be familiar with the technology you’re using (projector, software, microphone), so you can make necessary adjustments (brightness, volume), and resolve any glitches that may occur.

8 – Select colors and fonts for your visual components that will enhance readability and comprehension. Strive for good contrast between text, images, and backgrounds.

9 – Unless your attire is truly part of your presentation (think “birthday clown”), keep it conservative—you don’t want your appearance to draw focus away from your message.

10 – Let your audience know if you’ll be addressing questions throughout the presentation, or only at the end. Consider passing out note cards so that participants can jot down their questions as you go along.

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

Filed Under: Checklists, Project Management, Project Management Lists

4 Project Management Tips for “Scattered Team” Success

June 16, 2010 Leave a Comment

Many of today’s teams work on shared objectives while being geographically distant from each other. These scattered teams are often highly productive, but members run the risk of feeling alienated, less accountable to the team, and out of the loop—scenarios that could put successful completion of your project’s objectives in jeopardy. Avoid the most common pitfalls by using these tips to maintain your scattered team’s cohesiveness, morale, and efficiency.

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1 – Maintain regular communications. Schedule frequent online meetings or conference calls, and aggressively push the team to stick to the schedule. Missing or postponing meetings should be a last resort, as mobile phones and widespread online access make participation feasible in the majority of circumstances.

2 – Prioritize team communications. You won’t have the opportunity to chat about an issue at the water cooler or in the hallway, so respond to incoming communications—and send outbound messages—as soon as is practicable.

3 – If possible, maintain a central repository for electronic documents. This allows everyone to keep in step with the project’s needs and flow, while also strengthening feelings of accountability to fellow team members.

4 – Remember time zone differences between team members, and encourage individuals to manage their work hours accordingly. Members will likely need to support activities such as phone calls and online meetings in the early morning/late evening hours, and a reasonable degree of schedule flexibility will keep them from getting burned out.

4 – Recognize individual achievements and contributions. Giving a teammate a public pat on the back is one way to foster a strong team-centered environment, even if it’s done electronically. Don’t allow a lack of visibility to minimize the accomplishments of your team and its members—be sure to include stakeholders and project champions on the distribution list for any kudos.

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

Filed Under: Project Management Lists, Project Management Tips Tagged With:

Project Management Teamwork : When Good Confrontation Goes Bad

June 10, 2010 Leave a Comment

Many people think confrontation is something to be rooted out and stopped. On the contrary, the right kinds of confrontation can actually make your team more productive and your project more successful. Before you decide to invite your coworkers over for a grudge match, be sure you’re supporting the good sort of confrontation, and preventing the bad kind from hampering your team’s efforts.

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Good confrontation is ultimately productive, and will help team members move the project toward its objectives. Keep an open mind, and make an earnest effort to understand the opposing opinion(s). You’re likely to build team morale while achieving better-than-planned results.

Progress – your team may take time during the confrontation to explore options, research alternatives, and understand what’s at stake, but productive confrontation ultimately leads to progress. Once a disagreement has been sorted out, team members should have a positive result—a more feasible set of resources, more reasonable deliverables, better contracts with vendors, etc.—to support their efforts.

Re-examine objectives – disagreements have the potential to force your team or the project’s stakeholders to re-examine the project’s objectives in a new (and more fundamentally sound) light. This doesn’t mean the objectives were flawed originally. Any number of factors—resources, needs, market conditions, corporate strategy—might have changed along the way.

Increased efficiency – confrontations focused on methodology or processes have the potential to bring people to a new plane of efficiency, as long as everyone involved is truly committed to the project’s success, and not their own egos.

Remember that when you or your team is involved in a confrontation, attitude is imperative. If a team member gets positive results only after alienating the rest of the team and infuriating vendors, you may be headed for trouble in the long-term. Adhere tightly to the codes of professionalism and common courtesy at all times.

Bad confrontation has the potential to spread stress and animosity throughout your team. Keep an eye out for these telltale signs of unproductive (and often highly damaging) confrontation among your team members, stakeholders, end users, and vendors.

Distraction – if a disagreement is becoming a focal point beyond what you feel is reasonable, it’s time to step in. The success of your project and the achievement of its objectives are far more important than how a disagreement plays out. Keep the confrontation among the responsible parties, and discourage others from taking sides or getting into the discussion unnecessarily.

Lack of progress – good confrontation will result in some sort of progress, either in the form of additional buy-in, consolidation of resources, or a positive change in direction. If your team seems to be stalled, take another look at the disagreement and see if there’s a way to defuse it or reach a more agreeable compromise.

Breakdown in morale – stress among the team can quickly escalate to critical levels, requiring significant effort to bring everyone back to the table and re-focus on achieving objectives. A disagreement that fractures a team is unlikely to bear any worthwhile fruit in the end, and a group meeting to discuss the situation and get everyone back on track is essential.

Your ability to quickly spot and eliminate unproductive confrontations will play a significant role in the success of your team and your project. Rebuilding morale, soothing hurt feelings, dealing with potential personnel issues that may arise as a result, and restoring relationships that could have suffered real damage are all activities that take time, effort, and focus. The more adept you are at staving off problems early, the more you’ll be able to concentrate on productive tasks.

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

Filed Under: Project Management, Project Management Tips, Project Office Tagged With:

Project Management: Three Important Tips for Better Business Writing

June 3, 2010 Leave a Comment

Most projects require some amount of writing—memos, reports, status updates, budget justifications, personnel requests and other communications all call for clear, and sometimes persuasive, writing. If writing isn’t your thing (and for most of us it isn’t), then read on for tips to help streamline your writing tasks while improving your skills. [Read more...]

Clarity is key. Remember that the aim of most business writing is to convey information; readers are looking for solid, current data. If you’re missing information, outline what’s still unavailable, and clearly identify items that are preliminary or pending approval. If you know when you’re likely to have final clarification on this type of data, express that in your communication and be sure to follow up on it in a timely manner.

Be organized. Group similar topics, either by the type of data (dollars, results, timelines) or by project phase (budget, schedule, deliverables). Use bullet points to highlight key information, and provide data in a graphical format—charts, bar graphs, tables, etc.—if it will make the information easier for readers to understand and digest. Good business writing provides information with as few distractions as possible.

Maintain a no-nonsense approach. Jokes and clichés will only get in the way of your message. Clearly state the purpose of your communication. Titles like “news,” “update,” and “budget” are too vague to be sufficient; instead, “New York site inspection news,” “second floor furniture installation update” and “proposed revisions to expense budget” will let readers know exactly the type of data you have for them.

Business cases and other documents requiring persuasive writing should follow these same rules. Clearly state your request, outline the benefits to the organization, and provide the potential impact of inaction or lack of approval. If you have a deadline for the decision, state it up front.

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

Filed Under: Project Management, Project Management Lists, Project Management Tips, Project Office Tagged With:
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