Excerpted from Six-Word Lessons to Avoid Project Disaster
As a young hot-shot information technology (IT) project manager I was convinced that I had it all together. I was bound and determined to show all those more senior to me how to deliver successful projects. It wasn’t until I messed up not one, not two, but three projects simultaneously that I grew up and recognized I wasn’t all that I thought I was. While that period in my professional career was particularly painful, it was also some of the best learnings I could have gone through. Since then I’ve had successes and failures, but the failures became less frequent because I learned to get comfortable with others providing a critical eye on my work and helping with the necessary precision questioning to keep me out of hot water. This is the genesis behind Six-Word Lessons to Avoid Project Disaster.
Following are 15 lessons focused on the project sponsor and the questions to ask to ensure active, focused, and engaged project sponsorship.
Want to know the ten most important attributes of a best-in-class project sponsor? Check out Be a Killer Sponsor.
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On the 1980s HBO show Not Necessarily the News, comedian Rich Hall created Sniglets, which dictionary.com defines as “any word coined for something that has no specific name. Words like Jokesult (When someone insults you, you call them on it, and they say, "It was just a joke.”) and Chwads (discarded gum found beneath tables and countertops) were born to humorously explain commonplace things or actions. I’ve created 20 of my own project management and leadership sniglets; some made up words, others repurposed words or phrases. I hope they resonate with you and put a bit of humor in your day.
Have any of your own? Send them on to me! Lonnie Pacelli along with his wife Patty created the Six-Word Lessons series. He is the author of Six-Word Lessons for Project Managers, Six-Word Lessons to Avoid Project Disaster, and Six-Word Lessons for Dads with Autistic Kids. See more at lonniepacelli.com. Recently Patty and I met up with our financial advisor to walk through our long-term finances. A key component of that discussion was about our net worth, defined as assets minus liabilities. While we had a very fruitful discussion that resulted in some great take-aways, it got me to thinking about how easy it is to focus on a single aspect of one's life and derive how good (or bad) one might be doing based on that aspect. Don't get me wrong; one's net worth is certainly an important measure that needs to be tended to. My point is that there is more to life than net worth when looking at your overall contentment. This hit home for me with the suicides of famous figures Robin Williams, Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade, and others. These are people who appeared to have it all but to them something was so missing that it caused them to commit a horribly sad act. Lives ended too early; my prayers go to their loved ones. In thinking about contentment, I looked hard at what, to me, are the most important driving factors behind contentment. Keep in mind my analysis is not from a point of scientific expertise; rather it is from a point of practicality as to what I think are the most important drivers. I've honed my list to 8:
Now I completely realize that some of these above drivers are extremely important to some or not at all important. My point is not to second guess your importance level; what I do believe necessary is to decide how important each of the above drivers are to you. If something is not at all important to you then that is certainly your choice. Just be mindful of avoiding something that could adversely impact you later. As example, if you say financial contentment is not at all important and you decide not to financially plan for the future then you might be creating a problem for yourself later in life. So what now? I put together a simple excel spreadsheet which allows you to assess, for each of the contentment drivers, how important it is to you, what makes you content, and how you could be more content. I think it's important to articulate both what makes you content and how you could be more content for a couple of reasons. First, it allows you to celebrate things you are already happy with. Second, it enables you to improve on some things which you may already be doing well. If you find this helpful, you can download the excel template to help you self-assess yourself based on the 8 drivers. Download it here. As always, would love to hear what you think. let me know your thoughts in below comments. Lonnie Pacelli along with his wife Patty created the Six-Word Lessons series. He is the author of Six-Word Lessons for Project Managers, Six-Word Lessons to Avoid Project Disaster, and Six-Word Lessons for Dads with Autistic Kids. See more at lonniepacelli.com Colleagues - I just created a daily calendar for dads using our Six-Word Lessons format. Each month I focus on a specific topic, such as "Planning for the Future", "Balancing it All", "Managing Your Career", etc. Every day I send out a Six-Word Lesson for that topic (see samples above). To avoid flooding inboxes with daily emails, I am doing only through social media. If you would like to get these lessons in your social media feed click on one of the below social media buttons and follow me. I also appreciate you sharing the lessons in your social media feed :-).
When I wrote my first book in 2004 my publicist told me, "you've got to write articles to get your message out and sell books!" Being a good soldier I saluted and contemplated how I was going to get it done. My publicist turned me on to a ghost writer who wrote an article under my guidance. After paying way too much for the article and seeing the finished product, I vowed never again to have someone else write for me. I decided that if I had crappy articles it was going to be because I was the one who wrote them, not because I paid someone to write crappy articles for me. When I wrote my first article, I decided on the topic and just started writing. It was a disaster. The content was disjointed, lacked focus, and made no sense. It also took me hours and hours to produce a piece of garbage. There had to be a better way. Fortunately I found it after a lot of trial and error. Fast forward to today. I've written hundreds of articles and locked down on a methodology to writing articles which stay on topic, aren't disjointed, and are easy to create. Here's what I do: Every article I write has four sections, as follows:
When I use this structure, I not only get a better quality article, but can produce an article much faster than using the old method of "start at the beginning." If you want to see an example go here. See if you can pick up on the article flow. Happy writing! Lonnie Pacelli along with his wife Patty created the Six-Word Lessons series. He is the author of Six-Word Lessons for Project Managers, Six-Word Lessons to Avoid Project Disaster, and Six-Word Lessons for Dads with Autistic Kids. See more at lonniepacelli.com
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