Are you tired being an average project manager, working on average projects, being passed over for promotion, and getting an average performance review? You need to understand something right now. Being a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), proficient in the PM knowledge areas and having successful projects under your belt, is not enough to be a top performing project manager. There are new challenges and expectations today that require every project manager to evolve to the next level. If you do not take action now, you will be left behind.
New Challenges
Think of all the challenges you face on a daily basis: Motivating teams who are harder to mold and direct than those in the past. Introducing new services more swiftly to keep up with competitors. Managing change in all its variations from new company regulations, methods, policies, etc. Managing higher customer expectations. Managing higher company expectations.
Being a project manager with a traditional “tyrannical management and control” management style does not succeed in this new business environment. This is one of the reasons why there have been so many project managers, from all industries, let go in the past 3 years. Business executives realized their traditional project managers were not adding value to the organization. They could not meet new challenges and expectations. Traditional project managers are considered dead weight and on the endangered species list.
Meeting these challenges demands leadership. Why would you want to change your management style? Well, let’s see. Who is the best motivator? A Leader. Who gets the greatest effort and most insightful thinking from people? A leader. Who always meets stiff challenges and goals? A leader. Who summons from people old-fashioned workplace virtues like loyalty, commitment, and on-the-job exuberance? A leader. Who gets promoted? A leader.
Traditional Project Manager vs. Leader
So why are there so few leaders? Many believe the traditional “tyrannical management and control” management style based on ordering people around, kicking butt, and taking names gets results quicker. This can work, but there is a huge negative impact to employee morale, team performance, and long term success.
Review the following list, A Leaders 13 Core Competencies, and see whether you are a traditional manager or leader. To keep your current project management position or advance your career, you need to understand the difference between the two and which leadership core competencies you will need to work on for future success.
A Leaders 13 Core Competencies
Management Style. Traditional project managers supervise, control and correct. Leaders strategize, inspire, and motivate.
Goals. Traditional project managers focus on short term goals and follow endless series of internal processes to the letter. Leaders think and act like an owner of the company, recognize the importance of long term goals, have vision, and are committed to succeed.
Thinking Style. Traditional project managers are satisfied with incremental gains and follow ideas that worked in the past. Leaders are constantly searching for new knowledge and new ideas, willing to learn better methods and make sure employees expand their knowledge base.
Communication. Traditional project managers engage in one-way communication, give orders, and talk at people. Leaders encourage interactive communication, are receptive to both positive and negative feedback, and listen to employees and customers.
Emotion. Traditional project managers are analytical and coolly detached. Leaders produce emotional energy. They inspire employees and customers to consistently achieve goals.
Trust. Traditional project managers are firm believers in Murphy’s Law. They constantly monitor their employees. Leaders maintain a high level of trust with their employees.
Openness. Traditional project managers are closed minded, need everything proven to them, and take pride in saying “NO!”. Leaders embrace diversity and are highly receptive to new ideas and people who are different.
Action. Traditional project managers gather good ideas and rarely implement them. They over analyze, resist making decisions and avoid risk. Leaders are self starters and action oriented, they think fast on their feet, come up with solutions to critical situations, and take calculated risks.
Mentoring. Traditional project managers rarely coach or mentor employees. They focus on how things should be done and strictly follow procedures and checklists. Leaders help employees develop the habits they need to be more successful, empower employees to make decisions, observe performance and provide feedback.
Change. Traditional project managers like things the way they are, will do anything to avoid change, and see change as a threat. Leaders stimulate and relish change, adapt quickly to change, do not fear it, and see it as an opportunity.
Attitude. Traditional project managers are pessimistic and not approachable. Their first priority is to satisfy the boss, then customers and employees. They are judgmental and push blame down the line. Leaders realize the impact of a positive attitude, they treat everyone as special, remain objective, apologize and admit mistakes, and maintain a positive frame of mind.
Value System. Traditional project managers do not have personal or team values documented and they don’t know their own corporate value system. Leaders document and refer to personal and team values daily, they believe values guide people, and values are something considered worthy in and of itself.
Performance Measurement. Traditional project managers rarely measure or review performance. When they do, the measurements are judgmental, and employees rarely know how they are performing on a day-to-day basis. Leaders are always measuring data based performance, track employee progress, involve the employee in tracking their own performance, and use the performance measurements as a training tool.
How To Become A Leader
Were you born a leader? Of course not. Can you be a leader? Yes.
Leaders are made rather than born. To be successful and meet the new business challenges, traditional project managers must concentrate on developing the 13 Leadership Core Competencies. Leadership training, mentoring, experience, and daily dedication to the core competencies will be the key to your success in the future.
To get started on your path to becoming a project management superhero, you need to take the first step.
The following is a list of my favorite project management and leadership web sites that will help you take the first step: www.btrconline.com, www.ccl.org, www.pmi.org, and www.business.com.
My favorite leadership books include: “One Minute Manager”, “Seven Habits of Highly Successful People”, “Who Moved My Cheese”, “Not Bosses But Leaders”, “The Leader Manager – Guidelines for Action”, “Enlightened Leadership”, and “First Things First”.
Good luck with your future success.
Meeting New Business Challenges - The Next Generation Project Manager
Meeting With Investors About Your Business Idea
Raising money for your business can be very challenging especially if you are not the type of person who is comfortable marketing your business ideas. If you are one of those people who are not really very good at communicating you ideas verbally, it would be a good idea for you to spend a lot of time and efforts in preparing your business presentation to make sure that you have everything under control. When it comes to preparing your business presentation, you may need to the help of a business presentation expert just to make sure that you are able to get your points across clearly. Always remember that first impressions count when making business presentations so be sure to create a good impression in your potential investors.
When preparing your presentation for your meeting with the investors, make sure that you do not just present your business ideas, you should also them the potential profit that you can derive out of this business idea. Always remember that investors are very much concerned about profits so given them an idea of how you will mostly likely to earn and how it will take you to achieve this goal. Be realistic in your projections. Note that the investors will scrutinize these projections extensively and if they found out that you are bloating your projections, you will most likely lose their trust and their money.
Packaging Yourself
Investors are interested in you and your business. When the investors take a personal interest in you, it will be easier for you to convince then to finance your business venture. It is not uncommon for investors to invest in someone’s business simply because they know and trust that person. On the other hand, there have been cases where investors shy away from a good project simply because they do not like the person present who is making the business presentation. Since you as a person can make a big difference when it comes to convincing potential investors to pour in some money into your business, you make it a point to package yourself in such a way that the investors will like you and trust you. Now, do not attempt to gloss up your appearance. Investors will know it you are being phony so be honest about who you are and what you are.
Potential investors are not just interested in you; they are also interested in the members of your team. If you can bring some of the members of your team with you during your meeting, do so. A lot of investors are very concerned about how your team works so make sure that you demonstrate to them how you deal with the members of your team.
Surefire Ways To Meeting The Deadlines In Your Home Business
Make sure you meet the deadlines in your home business if you wish to succeed and make timely profits. Most home business owners are running their own business for the first time and they readily fall into the error that being the owner means they can afford to be undisciplined occasionally. If you study the successful business owners, you will quickly realize that they go about their business duties with a military efficiency. This lapse is often also found in people who do a regular 40-hour/week job and try to run a home business to supplement their income.
The fact is that whether you have too much time or too little time, unless you have the most basic business skill of time management you will never meet the deadlines in your home business and you will subsequently fail to understand why you never seem to make the kind of money you had hoped.
People who have never owned a business do not immediately realize that a deadline is not just a mental mark or reminder. They are tools that help to increase the efficiency of a business. Once you learn how to set realistic and meet the deadlines in your home business in a realistic manner you will be surprised to witness the positive results.
Deadlines are also good in helping you maintain focus on a task. Initially it can be very harrowing if you have two or more deadlines following each other closely but with practice you will learn how to prioritize things and tackle them in that order. That is another advantage of setting yourself deadlines.
If you do not meet the deadlines in your home business then you are already wasting several weeks in doing something that probably ought to have been finished in a few days. Trailing and prolonged tasks will bog down your entire business procedure and spread like a cancer into places where they did not originate.
Decide realistically what needs to be done and maintain a schedule either in a diary or in a PDA or other digital device. Digital is better because it can give you reminders and inform you of pending deadlines. After that, you just have to make sure you treat your schedule like the Ten Commandments. Follow them and you will surely see business heaven.
Conference Calling – Meeting The Needs Of The Modern Business
These days it seems business is becoming more and more complex and globalized. We are doing business with people everywhere in the US and in many instances, people in other countries. Due to the wide use of the Internet, the words “foreign country” doesn’t even seem to apply anymore.
The Internet has brought us all closer together in one aspect, but how does that affect investor relations, sales pitches, meetings, and group sessions? A lot of people now work closer with their computers than they do with co-workers and because of the Internet, many companies have people working for them from different parts of the world who have never even met each other.
Never before has conference calling been a more popular solution to the communication needs of companies and individuals all over the world. Conference calls are becoming increasingly popular as a method of bringing people together for meetings and discussions.
In this article, I will do my best to explain the advantages of conference calling for your business communication needs. Whether you are talking about meetings with investors, conference calls with your employees, making your sales presentation to groups, or simply needing several people in on the same discussion, conference calling is the most useful tool there is.
Chat rooms and message boards just don’t cut it. Message boards are impersonal, not real-time, and tend to get filled with useless information that isn’t directly related to your topic. Chat rooms are just that, chatty. You type in messages in real-time so it is better than a message board, but it again lacks the personal touches and insights conference calling provides.
Voice inflection, as many of you know is a great way to tell how someone feels about what you are saying. Simple typed messages do not give you that same advantage. When we hear our counterparts speak, we can tell how enthusiastic, positive, negative, or apathetic they are about what you say.
Conference calling is relational, while message boards and chat rooms are merely informational. That is the great difference in those options. You don’t make sales through information alone. You make sales by creating relationships.
You don’t encourage or motivate your employees or partners through information alone, you do it by creating relationships. You don’t instill confidence to your investors through providing just information, you do it by letting them hear how enthusiastic and positive you are about your proposal.
Only conference calling can provide the relationship solution when working with people who are too far away to physically attend meetings.
A simple search on your favorite search engine or just following the links in the footer of this article can provide you with many options for your specific conference calling needs.
What are some of the things that separate good conference calling services and bad ones? That is the question I get asked the most when discussing this topic. Here are some of the features you should look for;
High sound quality; The last thing you want to do is try to hold an important meeting through static, interrupted service, and low quality sound. The sound quality of your conference calls is far more important than the price or other features. If they cannot hear you speak clearly and you cannot hear them clearly, what is the use of a conference call at all?
Operators: While an operator assisted call is not necessary, having someone from your conference call service provider greeting each person as they are connected is a valuable service. They can tell the participants what to expect better than your own staff can, since they are familiar with the conference call software and service. In addition to that, the operator can and should monitor the entire call to make sure the sound quality maintains a high level of clarity. They will know what to do to fix it if a problem arises.
Recordings and Copies: If your conference call provider has the ability to record and provide playback of your conference call sessions, then you will want to take advantage of that feature. Some conference call providers can even provide it to you on CD afterwards. This is enormously helpful for you to be able to review your conference call sessions later. It may also serve as a record of agreements made during the conference call session.
Price: Last, but certainly not least, you have to consider price. You may be able to choose a conference call provider that gives you all of the features I mentioned above and more, or you may be on a tight budget and have to settle for less service. Whichever conference call service you use, do not sacrifice sound quality for price. That is the one feature you cannot afford to do without, no matter what the cost.
I hope this article on conference calling has been helpful to you. It was my goal to share with you what features I consider the most helpful to me in my business meetings.