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What Creative People Have in Their Resumes
| We are educating people the wrong way if we want them to become creative, according to Sir Kenneth Robinson and Mark Dziersk. That’s a problem because you need creative people to solve problems and design new solutions in your projects. The future will just bring new problems and unforeseen design elements required in solutions.
So how can you tell if candidates have been educated so that they can be creative and not intellectually constrained? It’s not tattooed on the back of their necks or in vocation chips implanted in their arms, unfortunately. One way to tell is to look for education that includes arts and literature, or other “atypical” intellectual development.
Workers with liberal arts in their skill set can boost team creativity consistent with business needs. They have already stretched their minds into many fields of endeavor and can apply concepts and techniques to your project. That is, unless your processes and people do not interfere. Perhaps it’s time for you to have recruiting and selection include checking for a liberal dose of liberal arts. |
Posted on: January 07, 2008 07:25 AM
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You Can Learn to Succeed at Office Politics 3
| Here’s my last application to the IT project managers role of good points from this article.
Identify the power holders . . . These may not be formal leaders, but informal leaders, those that are looked up to by many. They are asked to become involved in many high-profile or important initiatives. They may gain prestige from their desire to share their expertise, their ability to approve initiative/deliverables (for example PMO members or compliance representatives).
Mind your alliances . . . You interact with a group of people that agree with your philosophies and work goals. So does everyone. But do you interact much with those alliances that think differently? Probably not. Few do. If you want to succeed at office politics, it is wise to spend a little time with other alliances. It takes a little bit of energy, but in this way you can weaken the power of people who just naturally resist your goals. They will be easier to sell later when you need their support.
Be respected and respectful . . . Whether it is with power holders or members of other alliances, you must behave so that you are respected and that they see you respect each one of them. This will take some valuable new habits. You won’t be able to say everything you think. You’ll have to think of concrete positive things to say to anyone. You’ll even have to learn to respond constructively to comments you think are ridiculous. (“You moron!” not being helpful with power holders or members of other alliances)
All these are small personal improvements that will make you much better at office politics, and thus more successful overall in your projects. |
Posted on: December 26, 2007 08:29 AM
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You Can Learn to Succeed at Office Politics 2
| In my last post, I applied points gleaned from this article to IT project manager success. This time let’s look at a couple of mistakes to avoid, so that you don’t get on the wrong side of office politics.
Thwart your enemies . . . Sure this may feel good, but it exacerbates your problems. When things get politically tough, you may even want to blame your enemies – for failing to provide you with something or for otherwise creating obstacles for your project. A smarter tactic would be to listen to them. They could be the first to hint where weakness is in your project, in time for you to avoid a bad situation. They could give you a different perspective, so that you plan better. They can (gladly) tell you the source of a problem, so you can fix it faster. Maintain speaking terms with your enemies!
Hold On to Your Personal Workstyle . . . It’s easy to cling to personal habits and stay within your comfort zone. But in the world of office politics that is often a mistake. Any organization has a kind of work culture, so that those to whom project managers report expect certain behavior. Take a good look at how project managers interact in your organization. Are they hard charging? Quietly strong? Quick to raise even minor issues? Confident in presentations? Punctual to meetings? What common characteristics do you see that are opposite to your regular behaviors? These could be making you an outcast without you even knowing it! Avoiding these may take some energy on your part, but are worth the time. They'll get you closer to being a master of office politics. |
Posted on: December 19, 2007 10:13 PM
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You Can Learn to Succeed at Office Politics 1
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I just found this is brief article describing how to succeed at office politics without all the fluff you usually see. The only weakness is that it doesn’t apply the precepts to IT project management. So I’ll fix that, because, if you are like other project managers, you might experience a little office politics now and then.
One good point to remember is the “be an expert” in the organization. As an expert in project management, you can imagine the advantage you can have, this being a very, very, very, difficult profession. With expertise comes prestige, a special kind of influential power that the very successful have learned to grow. Allow me to suggest that gantthead.com can be a key resource for you, but you have to use what you learn, and keep improving. There is plenty of material here to grow your own expertise and prestige.
The article lists another useful point: Build a network. Trying to improve your skills? Then add network members who have a higher skill level, especially if they are at the level you aspire to. With such a network, you can get advice to avoid office politics and to troubleshoot political situations when they arise. You can imagine that it would be useful to have a network with members in your organization - and safely out of your organization to be more neutral with their advice. Here’s a shortcut: Get involved in gantthead’s network!
I really didn’t mean for this post to be such a commercial, but right is right. Anyway, we’ll mine this article more next post.
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Posted on: December 18, 2007 10:55 PM
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Nurturing Heretics for Your Own Gain
| Now that you have assessed your organization’s ability to support innovation by accepting heretics, per my last post, it’s time for some pointers to maintain balance between these heretics and your “routine” organization.
There’s more in this article in the way of tips for pumping up your organization’s creativity. It’s time to start selecting the right “wrong” people and enabling them to make the next great discovery for your organization. |
Posted on: December 11, 2007 10:44 PM
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