Teachable Moments: Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Terry Kuhn, PMP has more than 20 years experience in project management and people leadership. He is PMP certified with a BA in Communications, and a BS in Information Systems. He has spent the past 15 years leading projects, and coaching and developing project leaders through intranet design, training program development and strategic initiatives within the financial services industry.

 

Teachable moments are formed when you have done something--regardless of the outcome--and learned from the experience. Learning makes us better at what we do and provides a great opportunity to develop others and sharpen skills. We’ve compiled our best Teachable Moments from our community members for you to learn from and share with other project managers.

In my first project management role, I was a leader for a grounds crew at a baseball and softball athletic complex for a non-profit. It was a $100,000 project and I was an 18-year-old college student. The complex had flooded the year before and we were rebuilding the complex grounds with six fields, new bleachers and some common areas, and rehabbing the buildings.

We had a tournament scheduled for June that we did not want to reschedule because it brought in significant money from the concession stand sales. By the time the week of the tournament arrived, the fields, common grounds and buildings were in pretty good shape. However, the wooden bleachers on the largest field closest to the concession stand had been significantly damaged by the floods. We tried in vain to rehab the bleachers but ultimately we had to replace the boards.

There were four stanzas of bleachers that consisted of iron frames with wood steps, floorboards, seats and backs. Each had 10 rows that required 40 pretreated boards. This didn…

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